Singular Constituents of lite Chinese Pharmacopoeia. 437 



In the course of our peregrinations through the streets of 

 Shanghai we also came upon the shop of a Chinese apothe- 

 cary (Yak-Tien), which externally bears a considerable re- 

 semblance to a similar establishment in Europe, but widely 

 differs in respect of details. The Chinese Materia Medica is 

 especially abundant in patent medicines, the use and applica- 

 tion of which, it must be allowed, is frequently of the most 

 extraordinary nature. 



According to the latest researches of Dr. Hobson, of whose 

 important services in the diffusion of European medical 

 science in China we shall have much to say in a future 

 page, we are acquainted with 442 drugs from among the 

 three great kingdoms of Nature, which must be kept in every 

 well-stocked Chinese drug-store, of which 314 belong to the 

 botanical, 78 to the animal, and 50 to the mineral world. 

 We shall, however, in this place only indicate those of which 

 Chinese physicians avail themselves most frequently in the 

 preparation of their medicines, such, for example, as birds' 

 nests, dried red- spotted lizard, the fresh tips of stags' antlers, 

 the shell of the tortoise, dogs' flesh, bones of animals, pre- 

 parations from various parts of the human body, whale-bone, 

 oyster-shells, skins of snakes, shark's maw and fin, tendons 

 of deer and buffalo, dried silk-worms, their larvae and excre- 

 ment, bamboo shavings, the bear's gall, preparations from 

 human fcEces, scraped rhinoceros and antelope horn, rabbit 

 dung, cuttle-fish bone, dried varnish, dried leeches and earth- 

 worms, red marble, refuse of ivory, preparations from 



