# Leaves from my Chinese Scrapbook/Chapter 7

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 ​raised upon the surface; and though the process is not agreeable, the result certainly goes far to justify the principle of counter-irritation on which the treatment is based. Many of the medicines in use, however, are exceedingly coarse and disgusting, and, we should hope, are never resorted to except in extreme cases. A very curious method of procedure is adopted by the doctor who is called in to see a patient. The sick man does not open the interview by detailing his symptoms, as with us. That would involve an insult to the perspicacity of his adviser. It is the doctor who, by feeling the patient's pulse, is expected to detail the various ailments of his patron, which can be correctly diagnosed by a clever practitioner from the slow or hurried beats. He then writes out his prescription, pockets his horse-money or chair-money, as the fee is called, and takes his departure for the time. In most instances the medicine prescribed is of a very cheap and often very nasty description; there are, however, drugs highly prized among the faculty in China which are extremely precious. Diamond-dust is looked upon as a dangerous poison in India and the West; yet there are other precious stones, rare indeed in China, which are said to have a wonderful efficacy in curing certain disorders. A detailed description of one of these peculiar and certainly very expensive remedies lies before us. It consists of white and red coral, rubies or jacinth, pearls, emeralds, musk, and one or two earths in various quantities, crushed into powder, rolled into pills with gum and rose-water, and coated with gold-leaf. As a poison, one would think this composition must be quite invaluable; or as a tit-bit for an ostrich, did such birds exist in China; but as a medicine ​it is quite unique. It is said, however, to be an infallible cure for smallpox, measles, scarlet fever, and, in fact, all diseases which arise from blood-poisoning and break out in cutaneous eruptions. The strengthening qualities of the preparation are said, even on European testimony, to be quite remarkable; and the old Jesuits who flourished here during the early part of the present dynasty deliberately affirm that they have seen men snatched from the last convulsions of death by its judicious use. Another famous remedy is called kû chiu, or bitter wine. This reminds one of the bitter cup sold by chemists in England some five-and-twenty years ago. The preparation seems to be a strong and invigorating tonic; it is said to have great efficacy in cases of bile, indigestion, colic, and intermittent fevers, and to be an excellent preservative of health if taken, much as Europeans take the nauseous waters of Carlsbad and Aix, the first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. Its ingredients are neither so indigestible nor so expensive as those of the other. It is composed of spirit, aloes, myrrh, frankincense, and saffron. These are to be mixed and exposed to the sun for one month; the bottle to be well shaken from time to time, and the fluid used when it is perfectly clear, and yet impregnated with the various contents. These two remedies are not of Chinese origin. They are said to have been brought from India, where they were originally discovered. Readers of the Hung Lou Meng, one of the most charmingly written novels in the whole world, will remember the burlesque prescription proposed by a Buddhist priest for the ailments of Mademoiselle Pao-chai. It consisted of the pistils of a white moutan-flower or peony which had ​bloomed in the spring, of a white lotus that had bloomed in the summer, of a white poppy that had bloomed in the autumn, and of a white plum-blossom that had bloomed in the winter; of each of these twelve ounces. All these pistils were to be kept over till the vernal equinox of the succeeding year, dried in the sun, mixed into powder, and dissolved in twelve mace-weight of rain, and the same amount of pure dew, hoar-frost, and snowflakes, all of which must have fallen on that particular day. These ingredients were then to be mixed in equal proportions, made into pills the size of a dragon's-eye [lungan], and placed in an old porcelain jar, which must be buried under the root of a flower. When the patient felt her illness coming on, she was to dig up the jar and swallow one of the pills in a hot decoction of juniper-bark. It is, of course, evident that the due preparation of this medicine depends upon an impossible concatenation of coincidences; and it is just a bit of graceful humour at the expense of the medicos of China, whose abracadabra and affectation of mysticism are a fitting object of ridicule. The fact is, indeed, that the description is scarcely overdrawn, and any one who has had the patience or the curiosity to dip into many of the books which deal with the pharmacopoeia in China will testify to the existence of so-called remedies almost, if not quite, as preposterous. In many instances, as in one for toothache, the chances are that the patient would be either dead or cured weeks before the first ingredients of the marvellous panacea had been obtained.