438 Voyage of the JSJovara. 



toads, petrifactions, old copj^er money,* snow-water,t 

 human milk,| &c. &c. 



These pharmaceutics are brouglit from various parts of 

 China, as well as from Japan, Siam, and the Straits of 

 Malacca, and constitute an important and profitable branch 

 of commerce. Many of them are sold at the druggist's in 

 the raw state, when they are used as sympathetic remedies, 

 amulets, or generally for external use. The Chinese drug- 

 gists sell their medicaments for the most part in the form of 

 powders or pills. These latter are usually made up in a 

 capsule of bees-wax for greater facility of administration, so 



* Copper coins, struck by a ruler with whose reign any memorable occurrences 

 are associated, command a high price as health-giving amulets. Some of these, 

 those, for instance, of the Ming and Sing dynasties, have very special healing virtues 

 attributed to them. The currency of Tsching-ta (1506 — 1522) are unfailing preserv- 

 atives against the perils of pregnancy, and the illnesses consequent thereon. Others 

 are held in great honour as prophylactics. The mode of application consists in the 

 invalid dragging them by a cord over various parts of his body in a certain prescribed 

 order. 



t The Chinese attribute the most marvellous healing powers to water, and accord- 

 ingly apply it in a variety of forms, in numbers of maladies of the most dissimilar 

 character. Water, cold, tepid, warm, and hot, as also snow and iced-water, figure 

 among the hst of medicaments, as do also rain-water, well and river- water, brackish 

 water, dew, water from any eddy or whirlpool, or a stream, boiling-water, and 

 steam. 



\ The Chinese women are for this reason anxious to keep their children at the 

 breast for two or three years and even longer, partly by way of speculating upon 

 their having a constant breast of milk, and in this singular manner make up for any 

 deficiency of cow's milk, between the market demand and the actual supply. A 

 Chinese who possesses five or six concubines in addition to his legitimate spouse, 

 may thus boast of a regular dairy farm. As sailors on arriving in port are usually 

 excessively fond of milk, which they drink in large quantities, we were not a little 

 amazed on learning from a physician at Hong-kong the source whence in all proba- 

 bility had been derived the milk that was so plentifully supplied ! 



