Page:China- Its State and Prospects.djvu/133

 to trace between the five points at which the pulse may be feh, the five viscera, the five planets, and the five elements, is the fruitful source of innumerable mistakes in their practice; but we must remember, that it is not long since Bacon opened the gate of experimental science in Europe, and that our forefathers once united astrology with medicine, by which they blundered quite as much as the Chinese!

In the earliest classics of the Chinese, several physicians of eminence are referred to, and during the period of the "contending states," a medical man was called "the nation's arm," because he rescued so many from impending death. When China was divided into three kingdoms, about the third century of the Christian era, the father of Chinese surgery, Hwa-to, flourished. He is said to have laid bare the arm of a wounded chieftain, and to have scraped the poison off the scapula, while the unmoved warrior continued to play at chess, and to drink wine, with the other arm. A jealous tyrant of that age cruelly murdered this useful man, and his wife burnt all his manuscripts, by which means his valuable art perished with him. In the fourth century the well-known work on the pulse, quoted by Du Halde, was published. In the sixth century lived Chin-kwei, who is said to have cut into the abdomen, removed diseased viscera, and stitched up the part again, curing the patient in a month's time. The most eminent writers on medicine in China are the "four great masters," who flourished—the first in the third, the second in the thirteenth, the third in the fourteenth, and the fourth in the fifteenth centuries. The first is considered the father of physic, and has left numerous writings behind him. From the various treatises on