Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 31.djvu/773

Rh materia medica of China and Japan. When in a remote district of Japan, she became so unwell as to deem it necessary to consult a native doctor, of whom she says:

He has great faith in ginseng and in rhinoceros-horn, and in the powdered liver of some animal, which, from the description, I understood to be a tiger—all specifics of the Chinese school of medicines. Dr. Nosoki showed me a small box of "unicorn's" horn, which he said was worth more than its weight in gold.

She adds:

Afterward, in China, I heard much more of the miraculous virtues of these drugs, and in Salangor, in the Malay Peninsula, I saw a most amusing scene after the death of a tiger. A number of Chinese flew upon the body, cut out the liver, eyes, and spleen, and carefully drained every drop of the blood, fighting for the possession of things so precious, while those who were not so fortunate as to secure any of these cut out the cartilage from the joints. The center of a tiger's eyeball is supposed to possess nearly miraculous virtues; the blood, dried at a temperature of 110°, is the strongest of all tonics, and gives strength and courage, and the powdered liver and spleen are good for many diseases,. . . and were sold at high prices to Chinese doctors. A little later, in Perak, I saw rhinoceros-horns sold at a high price for the Chinese drug-market, and was told that a single horn with a particular mark on it was worth fifty dollars for sale to the Chinese doctors.

One of the said rhinoceros-horns was, as we have seen, among the most valued treasures of the old druggist of Osaka. This horn and that of the unicorn (which seems generally to mean the narwhal ) have ever been held in high repute throughout the East as an antidote to poison, and cups carved from these horns were used as a safe-guard because they possessed the property of neutralizing poison, or at least of revealing its presence.

And indeed the same virtue was attributed to it by the learned leeches of Europe. At the close of the sixteenth century the doctors of medicine in Augsburg met in solemn conclave to examiae nexamine a [sic] specimen of unicorn's horn, which they found to be true monoceros, and not a forgery; the proof thereof being that they administered some of it to a dog which had been poisoned with arsenic, and which recovered after swallowing the antidote. They further administered nux-vomica to two dogs, and to one they gave twelve grains of unicorn-horn, which effectually counteracted the poison; but the other poor dog got none, so he died. Similar statements concerning this antidote, and also concerning the value of elks' and deer's horns powdered as a cure for epilepsy, appear in various old English medical works of the highest authority.

Very remarkable, also, is the efficacy supposed to attach to ante-diluvian ivory, more especially the tusks of the mammoths, which have been so well preserved in Siberian ice that their very flesh is