Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/64

 *sary to devote any further space to the consideration of the physiological doctrines of the Chinese.

With respect to the questions of diagnosis and prognosis it may be stated that the Chinese attach great importance to the necessity of making a most careful objective examination of the entire body; but, when one investigates the precise manner in which this examination is to be carried out, it soon appears that most of the details relate to matters of a purely fanciful or mystical nature. The only steps of real importance, according to them, are the examination of the patient's pulse and the inspection of his eyesight and his tongue. From the examination of the pulse alone they believe it possible to diagnose the nature and seat of the disease. To examine the pulse properly is a complicated affair and can scarcely be carried out in actual practice in less time than ten minutes; indeed, in certain cases the physician may find it necessary to devote two or three hours to the business. According to the Chinese scheme there are many different kinds of pulse, and there are no less than thirty-seven different types of condition presented by the tongue, each bearing its own special pathological significance.

Disease, so reads the Chinese doctrine, is a discord, a disturbance of equilibrium, caused by the preponderance of one or the other of the primeval forces (the male or the female). It manifests itself in some disorder of the circulation of the vital air and the blood, and eventually involves the organs of the body. Wind, cold, dryness, moisture, the emotions and passions, poisons, and also evil spirits and imaginary beasts are the causes of disease.

No other nation, says Neuburger, has at its command such a large number of remedial drugs; and it is also a fact, he adds, that the department of therapeutics is that in which Chinese medicine has reached its highest development. The steadfast belief that in nature there exists a remedy for every human ill led the physicians of that country to search diligently in all possible directions for vegetable and animal and also, to some extent, mineral substances which might possess remedial virtues. Although