Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/772

752 little corpses are hung in festoons in many village shops, where I have often looked wonderingly at them, marveling in what broth of abominable things they might reappear. So lizards and dried scorpions (imported as medicine) also found a place in this strange druggist's shop—an "interior" so wholly unlike anything I have ever seen elsewhere, that the recollection of it remains vividly stamped on my memory—the multitude of earthenware jars containing the calcined animals all neatly ranged on shelves, the general litter of oddities of various sorts strongly resembling an old curiosity-shop, and, in the midst of all, the eccentric old man, who might have passed for a Japanese wizard rather than a grave physician. It was a strangely vivid illustration of what must have been the general appearance of the laboratory of the learned leeches of Britain in the days of our forefathers.

Before glancing at these, however, it may be interesting to note a few details of kindred medicine-lore in China, on which subject a member of the French Catholic mission, writing from Mongolia, says: "May Heaven preserve us from falling ill here! It is impossible to conceive who can have devised remedies so horrible as those in use in the Chinese pharmacopœia; such as drugs compounded of toads' paws, wolves' eyes, vultures' claws, human skin and fat, and other medicaments still more horrible, of which I spare you the recital. Never did witch's den contain a collection of similar horrors."

Mr. Mitford has told us how, also at Peking, he saw a Chinese physician prescribe a decoction of three scorpions for a child struck down with fever; and Mr. Gill, in his "River of Golden Sand," mentions having met a number of coolies laden with red deer's horns, some of them very fine twelve-tine antlers. They are only hunted when in velvet, and from the horns in this state a medicine is made which is one of the most highly prized in the Chinese pharmacopœia.

With regard to the singular virtues supposed to attach to the medicinal use of tiger, General Robert Warden tells me that on one occasion when, in India, he was exhibiting some trophies of the chase, some Chinamen who were present became much excited at the sight of an unusually fine tiger-skin. They eagerly inquired whether it would be possible to find the place where the carcass had been buried, because, from the bones of tigers dug up three months after burial, a decoction may be prepared which gives immense muscular power to the fortunate man who swallows it!

I am indebted to the same informant for an interesting note on the medicine folk-lore of India, namely, that while camping in the jungle, one of his men came to entreat him to shoot a night-jar for his benefit, because from the bright, prominent eyes of this bird of night an ointment is prepared which gives great clearness of vision, and is therefore highly prized.

Miss Bird, too, has recorded some very remarkable details on the