THIS JOURNAL OF PHARMACOLOGY. 97 



We have some account of the following as among early Chinese works 

 and authors: Nang-King wrote on medicine in the second century. Wang- 

 Shu in the third century wrote ten large volumes on the pulse. Nothing 

 farther is noted until A. D. 1247, when Sung-Tse is accredited with a work 

 on forensic medicine. This work is said to contain valuable observations 

 on the symptoms of drowning, and the fame of its mysterious wisdom is 

 so great that the very sight of it is said to be enough to make poisoners, 

 etc., confess their crimes. About A. D. 1500 appeared the Chinese cyclo- 

 paedia of medicine, edited by Prince Chu-Su, of the Ming dynasty, and 

 comprising 160 volumes, 770 treatises and 22,000 prescriptions. It was 

 mainly from this that a committee of 800 physicians, under the presidency 

 of Li-Shi-Chin, compiled in 1596 the famous Pun-Tsaou-Kang-mu, or Chi- 

 nese materia medica, in fifty-two volumes, describing 1,890 drugs. Medi- 

 cal literature then degenerated for a time into shorter monographs, of which 

 only that on acupuncture (seven volumes with copious illustrations) may 

 be noticed. In 1740 appeared a work of ninety volumes on the pulse, with 

 a short notice of the circulation of air in the body and the treatment of 

 fractures; and about the same time the Pentasco, or chief Chinese work 

 on botany, was published (Withington). 



A LACK OF FOUNDATION. 



It has been observed that, while the history of medicine since the time 

 of Hippocrates shows that among the people of the advancing nations of 

 the world the effort has been to establish the science of medicine upon the 

 real foundation of anatomy and physiology, yet among the Chinese and 

 other kindred people such a basis for the science of medicine has been 

 mostly unknown. With no foundation for medicine other than the demon 

 theory of disease, which has obtained among the Mongolians to the present 

 time, no development of science has been possible. As said by Dunglison, 

 "A variety of insurmountable obstacles have opposed themselves to the 

 Chinese ever attaining the same degree of civilization that the European 

 arrives at with so much comparative facility. The first is situated in his or- 

 ganization, whether natural or acquired by education: the second, in the 

 frightful despotism which hangs over his head; the third, in the foolish 

 vanity which has induced him to believe that China is the country of 

 wisdom and the sciences." 3 



The religion of a people never fails to have a great part in the forma- 

 tion of its civilization and in affecting its advancement in science and art. 

 Kung-foo-tseu (Latin, Confucius), born in China (B. C. 551), became a 



^History of Medicine, Dunglison, p. 71. 



