The Brookhaven leader., 1889-04-18
THE HEATHEN CHINESE.
They Are Full of superstItIons and Like Il
BE Humbugged.

The Chinese are full OF supersti.
tions, and many Of them firmly be-
lieve that the foreigners make medi.
cines out OF human beings. The mas.
sacre at Tien-Tsin in 1870. in which
twenty foreigners were killed, and
among them a number Of French nuns,
was caused by the report that the sis
ters were killing children to get their
hearts and eyes for medical purposes,
and the trouble in Corea last spring
was caused by the circulation OF the
stories that the missionaries were
grinding up children's bones to
make medicine. This report was
started by the Chinese, and
the latest attempt OF the kind
] find to-day here at Shanghai. 1t ap-
pears in a tri-monthly illustrated mag
azine which the Chinese publish and
which sells for five cents a copy. This
contains full description OF how the
foreigners make their medicine, with
ghastly illustrations of the severed
trunks and the cut-up limbs of human
beings. In one cut men in American
clothes are bending over great furnaces
in which the heads and legs Of men
are boiling. and beside which
great baskets and tubs of cut-up
humans lie. The men are stirring the
steaming mass and the picture makes
one think OF the witches caldron in
macbeth" In another cut is shown
the machinery for the bringing up oil
the bones and flesh. A dozen old skel-
etons lie upon the floor, and a man
with shovel puts the ghasuy mass
upon the scales for weighing. In an
other room the medicine is packed up
to be sent away, and young ladies in
American dress with waterfalls and
French heels are busy at it. / asked
the manager OF the magazine whether
he believed in such stuff, and he re-
piled that he did not know and asked
II it was not really true.
The Chinese themselves do not be-
lieve in dissection, and there is no
body-snatching here. They believe
that the heart is the seat of thought,
that the soul exists in the liver, and
that the gall bladder is the seat of
courage For this reason the gall
bladders of tigers are eaten by soldiers
to inspire them with courage. The
Chinese doctor ranks no higher than
the ordinary skilled workman. He
gets from fifteen or twenty cents d
visit, and he often takes pa
tients on condition that he will
| cure them within a certain time or
no pay. He never sees his female
patients except behind a screen, and
he does not pay second visit unless
invited. His pay is called golden
thanks" and the orthodox way OF
sending it to him is wrapped in red
paper. The dentists look upon pulled
teeth as trophies, and they go about
with necklaces of decayed teeth about
their necks or with them strung upon
strings and tied to sticks. Toothache
is supposed to come from worm In the
tooth, and there are set OF female
doctors who make business of extract
ing these worms. When the nerve is
exposed they take this out and call it
the worm, and when not they use
sleight of hand by which they make
their patients believe certain worms,
which they show them. came from
their teeth. / have heard persons tell
of Cinnamon who claimed to have had
ten worms taken from their mouths in
single day, and 1 saw woman act
ually at work upon patient in the
street here. China is as full of super
stition as the West India islands. and
the people like to be humbugged quite
as well here as we do in America.