Susceptibilit(j of the Chinese to Mercury and Quinine. 453 



either of these drugs very speedily shows a marked effect. 

 Oddly enough, quinine, as a tonic and febrifuge, is unknown 

 in the Chinese pharmacopoeia, and is almost exclusively pre- 

 scribed for the cure of the opium-smoking form of mania. 



In China, a physician is treated with great distinction, and 

 is usually designated as szi-yay (the honourable teacher). 

 Of late years cholera (tschan-kan-tschui, literally '' the con- 

 tracting of the tendons") and small-pox had committed fear- 

 ful ravages among the populace, and the appalling havoc 

 committed by the latter-named disease gave occasion for the 

 publication by the English missionaries of a short treatise trans- 

 lated into Chinese, on the importance of vaccination. Among 

 children especially the mortality caused by this fell scourge 

 was very great, and the instances of leucoma and loss of sight 

 resulting from the disease appear to have been very numerous. 



Dr. Hobson, who in 1851 had published a volume of 

 Physiology in the Canton dialect, has also completed a hand- 

 book of Practical Surgery, with 400 woodcuts, and, like the 

 preceding, had had it printed by native workmen. Even 

 the drawings were drawn on the wood and cut by native artists 

 after English originals. Many of the scientific phrases con- 

 tained in these works must have required to be entirely re- 

 constructed, or else expressed by a circumlocution. Dr. Hobson 

 intended to follow up these two splendid undertakings with a 

 fresh work upon Pharmacology, as also a treatise upon the dis- 

 eases of women and children, both, like their predecessors, to 

 be in the Canton dialect, as that most universally used. 



