20th May. Puo gift of healing tends powerfully in modern tinies to promote thie unity and brotherhood of mankind. Medical tihissions form 4 prominent part of the hitodern missionary enterprise; and this 'éunection will be in the future more' and more developed because medical knowledge and skill readily become selipropagating. Few persons are aware how extensively vaccination is practised in China by native operators, who learned the art ili the first instance at Canton almost at the beginning of this century. 'At that time a surgeon on the staff of the East India Company, under the impulse of philanthropy introduced the practice of vaccination and it has been spreading in the country ever since.' This gift to China has already proved of immense value, and the incidental cause of its diffusion is found in the rotatory nature of the mandarinate, which takes officers of intelligence Canton, for instance, for a time, and then transfers them after a few years'! residence to sume other part of the country. Magistrates are removed from city to city, and this has aided in the} propagation of Western improvements which in the old days entered China at, Canton exclusively. Ihe practice of vaccination in Peking is known to have commenced in this way, and from that, city it has extended and is still extending through the eleven prefectures of that province. At the meeting of the! Missionary Conference on May 14 it was mentioned that the rapid sale ofmorphia America, abody essentially philanthropic, The possibility of thie human subject se: and are engaged im introducing as' curing immortality by Taoist methods ts rapidly as it is possible to do every discussed and the affirmative is believed. beneficial feature in the healing art as!'The Soo wen having i it these and now practised in the West. other curious things, such as the rotun= Medicine in China is very old. In' dity of the earth and the doctrine of a the year 579 before Christ the moxa' universal and primeval vapour, avid and acupuncture were already practised having as already said a distinct titicturé by Chinese physicians, for it is in that of the Mesopotamian astrology, consti year that this treatment is first men- tutes in itself a convincing proof that tioned in any book, Chinese or foreign. ' China was receptive of Western know-The passage will be found in page 874 of ledge to a large exténtin the fifth, fourth, Legge's Chinese classics, volume fifth. ' and third centuries before Christ. From In addition to this there was the cele- that time duritig more than two thou= brated Pien-tsia, who some time during ' sand years China has been under the the period from the eighth century, dominion of the philosophy of this book. before Christ to the sixth performed She has been so through the whole range remarkable cures by feeling the pulse of native medical thought. 'The com-first and basing his treatment upon the' position of new medical books has indications.
On one occasion he was in, never ceased during that long continued attendance on a prince who was in a; time. Among these works the Pen-ts'au, state of unconsciousness for five days,' themateria medica of the Ming dynasty, and he depended on pulse feeling for' is the most useful and comprehensive. his knowledge of the patient's condition.' It stands to reason that Chinese He was probably a native of Hochienfu medicine deserves to be studied, and a in Chihli, 'I'he stories told cannot all fuller account of it than we yet have have been true of him as an individual, ought to be given in the English tongue. belonging as they do to different cen- 'I'he twenty physicians in the Mission-turies. They indicate, however, that the ary Conference, who are now holding feeling of the pulse was in use among a special conference would do well to apphysicians at that early time. Hippo- point one of their body, or invite someone crates, the founder of Greek medicine, ' else, to become the historian of Chinese certainly lived in the sixth century, and medicine, by preparing careful narrative in his title the pulse had already. be- ofitsgrovrth and presentstate, andthusdo come the fulcrum of Chinese medical whatSprengel has done for the history of practice. The knowledge of this fact medicine in Europe. It may be confid-helps in fixing a limit for the field of ently predicted that such a work would investigation into the healing art of; shewthatChinese medicine, being the re-China. The history of that art spreads sult of the uninterrupted experience of over six centuries before Chirist, and two thousand five hundred years, in spite nineteen centuries afterwards medicine of its Babylonian theory, now exploded flourished when literature and philo- by modern discoveries, is deserving of sophy flourished. he great books of high respect for its practical utility in pills has fixed the attention of medical Chinese medicine, the Svo wen and the missionaries at the present time as an' Ling dao, were written at about the evil to be deplored, and their earnest! same time as the Four Books or a little advice has been tendered to the mis- later. Thus they belonged to the age sionary body to discourage it firmly! of the sages. "They mark the first anion the Christians, A remarkable prosperous period of this noble art, feature in the missions at present is, when it had escaped from the hands of the increased number of medical meu, exorcists and diviners who in earlier ages of whom no fewer than twenty were had been accustomed to care for the sick. many important ways.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.