Page:Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook - Balfour, 1887.djvu/80

 CHAPTER VII.

CHINESE MEDICINES.

The medical remedies of the Chinese afford a promising field of inquiry to the student of curiosities. No one who is not fairly acquainted with the pseudo-philosophies of China, the strange affinities which are supposed to exist between the five points of the compass, the five colours, the five flavours, the five elements, and other fanciful phenomena, can rightly understand the principles on which certain substances are supposed to be antagonistic to certain humours and conditions of the body. For a rough list of the medicaments in common use in China one has only to study the ordinary Customs returns, which will be quite sufficient to show the very extraordinary character of the articles which go to make up the Chinese pharmacopoeia. Some of these medicines are, no doubt, useful enough. The Chinese are known to have a wide knowledge of herbs and simples, and their primitive ideas of surgery are in many instances founded upon true principles. A case in point is the practice of pinching and scraping the skin with a view to drawing out internal inflammation. A slight "touch of the sun" is unmistakably relieved by the hard tweaking of the skin between the eyes and on the breast with a couple of copper cash, until a livid red line or patch is