404 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



Chinese physique evinces some superiority or other over that of their 

 home people. As regards surgical cases, the general opinion is voiced 

 by one English surgeon, who said, " They do pull through jolly well ! " 

 It was commonly observed that surgical shock is rare, and that the pro- 

 portion of recoveries from serious cuttings is as high in the little poorly 

 equipped, semi-aseptic mission hospitals of China as in the perfectly 

 appointed, aseptic hospitals at home. Dr. Kinnear, of Eoochow, re- 

 cently home from a furlough in Germany, found that in treating 

 phlegma of the hand he with his poor equipment and native assistants 

 gets as good results as the great von Bergman working under ideal 

 conditions on the artisan population of Berlin. The opinion prevails 

 that under equal conditions the Chinese will make a surer and quicker 

 recovery from a major operation than the white. 



Many never get over being astonished at the recovery of the Chinese 

 from terrible injuries. I was told of a coolie who had his abdomen 

 torn open in an accident, and who was assisted to a hospital supported 

 by a man on either side and holding his bowels in his hands. He was 

 sewed up and in spite of the contamination that must have gotten into 

 the abdomen, made a quick recovery. Amazing also is the response to 

 the treatment of neglected wounds. A boy whose severed fingers had 

 been hastily stuck on any how and bound up with dirty rags came to 

 the hospital after a week with a horrible hand and showing clear symp- 

 toms of lockjaw. They washed his hand and sent him home to die. 

 In three days he was about without a sign of lockjaw. A man whose 

 fingers had been crushed under a cart some days before came in with 

 blood poisoning all up his arm and in the glands under the arm. The 

 trouble vanished under simple treatment. A patient will be brought in 

 with a high fever from a wound of several days standing full of mag- 

 gots; yet after the wound is cleaned the fever quickly subsides. A 

 woman who had undergone a serious operation for cancer of the breast 

 suffered infection and had a fever of 106°, during which her husband 

 fed her with hard water chestnuts. Nevertheless, she recovered. 



Nearly all are struck by the resistance of the Chinese to blood 

 poisoning. From my note books I gather such expressions as " Blood 

 poisoning very rare. More resistant than we are to septicaemia." 

 " Relative immunity to pus-producing germs." " More resistant to 

 gangrene than we are. Injuries which at home would cause serious 

 gangrene do not do so here." " Peculiarly resistant to infection." 

 " With badly gangrened wounds in the extremities show very little 

 fever and quickly get well." " Women withstand septicasmia in ma- 

 ternity cases wonderfully well, recovering after the doctors have given 

 them up." " Becover from septicasmia after a week of high fever that 

 would kill a white man." No wonder there is a saying rife among the 

 foreign doctors, " Don't give up a Chinaman till he's dead." 



