Page:The growth of medicine from the earliest times to about 1800.djvu/65

 this search necessarily brought to notice a lot of useless drugs, it cannot be denied that eventually it added a considerable number of remedies which have proved useful to the medical profession of the entire world. In this category belong the following: rhubarb, pomegranate root as a cure for worms, camphor, aconite, cannabis, iron (for the relief of anaemia), arsenic (for malarial and skin diseases), sulphur and mercury (both of these for affections of the skin), sodium sulphate, copper sulphate (as an emetic), alum, sal ammoniac and musk (for nervous affections). Toward the middle of the sixteenth century A. D. there was published, under the title "Pen-Tsao-Kang-Mu," a monumental work (fifty-two volumes) in which are very fully described no fewer than 1800 remedies, mostly of a vegetable nature. Prophylactic Inoculation with the pus from a smallpox pustule was practised by the Chinese as long ago as during the eleventh century A. D., "thus constituting a forerunner of our modern serum therapy." (Neuburger.) Vaccination was not introduced into China until during the nineteenth century of the present era. It is a curious fact that, in the choice of a remedy, the Chinese physicians attach a certain degree of importance to the form and color of the drug, as symbols indicative of the effect which they may be expected to produce. Thus, the red blossoms of the hibiscus plant are believed to be more efficacious than the white as an emmenagogue; saffron, being of a yellow color, possesses the power to relieve jaundice; beans that have the shape of a kidney should be prescribed in cases of renal disease; glow-worms should form a part of all eye-washes, etc.

The doses prescribed are very large, and the medicines are often put up in an attractive form, with labels on which such descriptive titles as these are written: "Powders of the Three very wise Men," or "Powders recommended by Five Distinguished Physicians"—titles which are calculated to work upon the imagination of the patient.

There are two methods of treatment which the Chinese physicians are very fond of employing for the relief of a great variety of diseases—viz., acupuncture and cauteriza