The morning journal-courier., 1908-08-07
MEDICAL ART
As rracticcd in China---Sonl is the
 Liver. Stomach the Brains.

The healing art, as practiced by na- tive doctors In China at the present day, is strange mixture of supersti- ton, charlatanism and quackery. Med ical knowledge among the Chinese has been al a standstll for many centuries, and what the early Jesuit missionaries wrote about it In the seventeenth cen- tury Is true at tbe opening of the twentieth Le Comte, In his memoirs and observations, published in the lat ter part of the seventeenth century, wrote: There is another disorder in China, great deal more dangerous than that they lay to our charge, and that Is that there everybody Is admit ted to practice physic, like other me- chanical arts, without examination or taking degrees" says the Chicago News
 Nolumnous works on medicine, on he pulse, acupuncture and other med cal topics were extant in China cen- tu.ies before the Christian era, yet at the present day Chinese doctors are ab-
 
 physiology, anatomy and natural philosophy. They continue to ascribe diseases of every kind to pestilential winds, to the five colors, blue, yellow, red, black and white, to the five ee- ments, gold, wood, water, fire and earth, and to heat and cold. Imbued with the belief that all parts of the material world are mutually connected the Chinese physician argues that a person of acute discernment can trace the connection and overcome It's ma lign influences,
 One of the most curious of the Chin ese ideas of anatomy Is the belief In the connection between certain inter- nal organs and the thoughts and pas sons. Thus, the heart and pit of the stomach are regarded as the seat of ideas and delights; the soul resides in the liver, from which emanate all good and noble purposes; and In the gall bladder is contained such courage as the individual may possess. The brain is never mentioned in Chinese medical works. The lungs are believed to be white. are in the thorax, and consist of six lobes, four on one side and two on the other. Sounds proceed from holes in them" The liver has six lobes and In Chinese anatomical charts, ls placed on the right side, while the large intestine with It's sixteen convolutions is connected with the lungs.
 Native doctors pretend that they car determine the nature of each ailment It's treatment and prognosis by tho includes a translation of one of tho standard Chinese works on the pulse fl his books on China It appears iron this that there are three pulses In eacl arm, each of which is again sub -dlvid ed into an inner and outer purse, mak ing twelve pulses in all Of each pus there are nineteen varieties, and ever. pulse Is connected with and shows tn condition of some internal organ Thos on the left arm, for example, are con nected with the heart, small intestines liver, gall bladder, kidney and bladder respectively, The six pulses on eacl arm may vary at the same time ant are supposed to be affected by the sea sons.
 It Is amusing to read the description of the varieties of pulses that indicat the approach of death. The disease likely to terminate fatally If any of tn following symptoms are present. If tn pulse frisks like fish that dives ev cry minute and then comes up so slow ly that one would think she is held b the tail, and yet makes her escape; 1t bubbles like water over great fir in the morning; if 1t seems like grea