21st May. Taemost popular evening the Missionary Conference has spent must have been Tuesday, the 13th instant, which was resent at the Conference. The excellent works prepared by Dr. Hobson in Chinese on medical subjects thirty years ago are still on sale, and these books have been extremely useful in opening the way to the knowledge of the Western art of healing for Chinese readers. How many valuable works of others, such as Drs. Kerr, Dudgeon, Porter, Osgood, and Douthwaite have been more recently produced the book lists show. The amount of knowledge, not only strictly medical, but dietary, sanitary and scientific thus communicated to the Chinese has been very great, and this is all recognised by the missionaries generally and by the societies who send them out as an essential part of the enterprise to which they are committed. Contemplating medical missions from another very important point of view, missionaries who heal the ailments of the Chinese are the representatives of the whole medical profession of Europe and 'They are the classics of Chinese medicine and in them its theory and principles are enshrined. In' these books we find such statements as that metal and water combine, in accord with the influence of Venus and Mars. The soul is spoken of as something distinct from though included in the body. Madness, fever, apoplexy, paralysis, cholera, are here all described. The five elements are represented as revolving powers and, they correspond to the five: planets in the heavens. The earth moves westward through space which surrounds it below as well as above and around. Iguorauce of astrology is stated to be a cause of disease and death. Interlaced with the doctrine of the five elements is found the doctrine of the dual principles of darkness and light each divided into greater and lesser. The veins and arteries are here described as canals originating in the skin which consequently is that part at which all disease com-merices its invasion on the human frame. devo to "Missionary Experience." That is, the older missionaries were put up to answer questions on all sorts of subjects connected with their calling, the answers being limited to two minutes. A lot of questions were asked and answered which everybody wants to ask at some time or other; in fact, if Tuesday evening's proceedings were printed on a sheet of pasteboard and a copy bung up in the room of every new arrival in China, an enormous enlightenment would ensue. " Why do missionaries wear Chinese clothes?" is a question constantly asked. Here it is fully answered, though some of the answers are not exactly what we should expect. One answer is that it is a matter of self-denial to wear them, but it does not seem to us to require much self-denial to wear a dress, which is "warmer in winter, and cooler in summer, and has every advantage in its favour," besides imparting to the wearer a dignity which can never accompany a
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.