75 2 ' THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



little corpses are hung in festoons in many village shops, where I have 

 often looked wonderingly at them, marveling in what broth of abomi- 

 nable things they might reappear. So lizards and dried scorpions 

 (imported as medicine) also found a place in this strange druggist's 

 shop an "interior" so wholly unlike anything I have ever seen else- 

 where, that the recollection of it remains vividly stamped on my 

 memory the multitude of earthenware jars containing the calcined 

 animals all neatly ranged on shelves, the general litter of oddities of 

 various sorts strongly resembling an old curiosity-shop, and, in the 

 midst of all, the eccentric old man, who might have passed for a 

 Japanese wizard rather than a grave physician. It was a strangely 

 vivid illustration of what must have been the general appearance of 

 the laboratory of the learned leeches of Britain in the days of our 

 forefathers. 



Before glancing at these, however, it may be interesting to note 

 a few details of kindred medicine-lore in China, on which subject a 

 member of the French Catholic mission, writing from Mongolia, says : 

 " May Heaven preserve us from falling ill here ! It is impossible to 

 conceive who can have devised remedies so horrible a9 those in use 

 in the Chinese pharmacopoeia ; such as drugs compounded of toads' 

 paws, wolves' eyes, vultures' claws, human skin and fat, and other 

 medicaments still more horrible, of which I spare you the recital. 

 Never did witch's den contain a collection of similar horrors." 



Mr. Mitford has told us how, also at Peking, he saw a Chinese 

 physician prescribe a decoction of three scorpions for a child struck 

 down with fever ; and Mr. Gill, in his " River of Golden Sand," men- 

 tions having met a number of coolies laden with red deer's horns, some 

 of them very fine twelve-tine antlers. They are only hunted when in 

 velvet, and from the horns in this state a medicine is made which is 

 one of the most highly prized in the Chinese pharmacopoeia. 



With regard to the singular virtues supposed to attach to the 

 medicinal use of tiger, General Robert Warden tells me that on one 

 occasion when, in India, he was exhibiting some trophies of the chase, 

 some Chinamen who were present became much excited at the sight 

 of an unusually fine tiger-skin. They eagerly inquired whether it 

 would be possible to find the place where the carcass had been buried, 

 because, from the bones of tigers dug up three months after burial, 

 a decoction may be prepared which gives immense muscular power to 

 the fortunate man who swallows it ! 



I am indebted to the same informant for an interesting note on 

 the medicine folk-lore of India, namely, that while camping in the 

 jungle, one of his men came to entreat him to shoot a night-jar for his 

 benefit, because from the bright, prominent eyes of this bird of night 

 an ointment is prepared which gives great clearness of vision, and is 

 therefore highly prized. 



Miss Bird, too, has recorded some very remarkable details on the 



