Page:China- Its State and Prospects.djvu/134

 medicine, one imperial work has been compiled, in forty volumes, called "a golden mirror of medical practice," which was completed nearly a century ago, after four years' labour. Other works on medicine have successively appeared; and a gentleman in Canton, wishing to obtain all that was procurable in that city, made a collection of eight hundred and ninety-two volumes of medical books: so that if the Chinese know little of the science in question, it is not for want of books or theories.

We are not, however, to estimate the value of medical knowledge in China by the aggregate of treatises on the subject; or the efficiency of their practice, by the number of doctors' shops throughout the country: for though the celestial empire literally swarms with medical works and apothecaries' shops, jet the number of successful practitioners we believe to be small. For the most part, their medical practice is mere quackery; and their surgery, in modern days, does not extend beyond puncturing, cauterizing, drawing of teeth, and plastering, without attempting any operation in which skill or care is required.

The advance which the Chinese have made in the fine arts has been more considerable than in the sciences. To begin with painting, we may observe that the graphical representations of the Chinese are not altogether despicable. It is true they lamentably fail in the knowledge of perspective, and the differences of light and shade have not been much noticed by them. But their colours are vivid and striking, and in delineating flowers, animals, or the human countenance, they are sometimes very successful. The Chinese drawings brought to this country on what is called rice paper,