Page:Illustrations of China and Its People vol. IV.pdf/37

 medical missionaries (such as Drs. Lockhart, Dudgeon, Maxwell, and many others) have laboured effectually to extend knowledge among the native practitioners who have assisted them in their exertions.

Notwithstanding all this, there still remains an army of quack doctors, tens of thousands strong, holding their ground against foreign innovations, and prepared to cure or kill their deluded patients by the arts of geomancy, or by potent pills. These pills frequently contain a little of almost everything, and their compounders trust to the principle of elective affinity, by which the disease will elect its own remedy from the heterogeneous compound. Empirics such as these are to be found all over the country, and their small yellow posters disfigure the walls of all the great cities. Even the meanest street-barber professes a certain curative skill. Turning up the eyelids of his patients, in order to cleanse and dress them, he removes the lubricating mucus, and thus gives rise to a class of eye-diseases common among the Chinese. He is also frequently seen pummelling the back of his patient with his fists in order to cure or prevent rheumatism. Many of the Chinese city quacks compound their medicines at the street corners, under the public gaze; and there they deliver eloquent harangues to their customers on the virtues of their pills and plasters.

While at Peking I sent for a dentist, who brought with him a case of ivory fangs, and offered to fix in a felinelooking incisor for about one shilling. It was to be attached by wires to the neighbouring teeth. I declined the ornament, but paid him a fee for his advice.

The subject of the illustration, No. 26, is a travelling chiropodist, operating upon a corn, and dressing the toe-nails of a customer; while a second patient waits placidly until his own turn arrives, smoking the pipe of peace from a broken window.

IN all Chinese cities there are to be found a great variety of itinerant showmen, jugglers, fortune-tellers, play-actors, and peep-show men. Besides these we have ballad-singers, and a host of story-tellers and public readers, who frequent the tea-shops and favourite haunts of the leisure-loving Chinese. There are still other places of public resort, where the citizen may spend his leisure in gambling or opium smoking, or where he may go to feast with his friends to the accompaniment of lute and guitar, and the shrill piping voices of painted female musicians. Some of these lady performers must appear supremely enchanting to the male frequenters of their musical dens, viewed as they are through the illusive vapour of hot wine, the fumes of opium, and the flare of smoky lamps. Seen from a little distance, these damsels, many of them, look simple and pretty, but a nearer glimpse is much less satisfactory, as they are daubed with enamel and dressed like dolls in the most tawdry tinsel. They appear, indeed, to have heads which resemble those of cleverly-made clay figures, and capable of being lifted out of the tine silk and satin robes in which they are set. This reminds me that the natives of Tientsin make painted images out of clay more life-like than any which I have ever seen elsewhere. Each image is a perfect work of art, and the artist is about as poorly paid as if he were an ordinary tiller of the soil.

Puppet-shows, exactly like our street Punch and Judy, are common in China. The motion is imparted to the puppets by introducing the fore-finger into the head, and the thumb and second finger into the sleeves of the figure, while the heads, too, can be adroitly changed, in order to bring a number of different characters on the scene, and to suit the requirements of the play.

There is another sort of puppet-show, a night one, to be met with at fairs and festive gatherings. In an exhibition of this kind the shadows ot the puppets are thrown upon a white screen by means of a lamp behind.

The peep-show also (see No. 27) enjoys a large share of public favour. It is fitted with a series of lenses in front, through which the eye of the spectator beholds the wonders of the world. Foreign pictures share the attractions with Chinese representations and moveable figures, the showman delivering a running commentary on