Page:China- Its State and Prospects.djvu/132

 earliest physicians have mostly died with their inventors, and posterity have scarcely been able to equal, much less to exceed, the ancients. Some allusion has been made above to the "Divine Husbandman," who discovered the noxious and healing qualities of various plants, and laid the foundation of the Chinese pharmacopoeia. About the same time lived a statesman, to whom the invention of the puncture is attributed; this man left on record two fragments, which are looked upon as the most ancient notices on the cause and cure of diseases in China. In these fragments the circulation of the blood is recognised, and compared to the unceasing revolutions of the heavens and the earth, which begin, end, and begin again from the same point at which they originally set out; thus, they say, the blood goes round and round the human body, till its dissolution. It must not be imagined from this, however, that the Chinese understand the circulation of the blood, as the phrase is used in Europe; or know anything distinctly about the veins and arteries through which it flows. Not having practised anatomy, they are unacquainted with the internal structure of the human frame, and remain satisfied with the fact of the blood's circulation, without attempting to explain it.

To the pulse, however, they have paid close attention, and are enabled to discover its variations with a nicety and precision, scarcely equalled by European physicians. They affect to distinguish twenty-four different kinds of pulsations, and will frequently proceed to prescribe, without asking a single question, or examining any other prognostic. The system which they have imagined to themselves, is more the result of fancy than experience; and the connection they pretend