56 INTRODUCTION. 



attempt. At low tide lie fastened on eitlier side of tlie vessel fifteen or seventeen boats, sucli as 

 those by whicb the Dutch ships are towed in, and connected them all together firmly by props 

 and stays. He then waited for a spring tide, when he came in a Japanese coasting vessel, 

 which he attached firmly to the stern of the sunken ship, and at the moment when the tide was 

 highest, he set every sail of every boat. The sunken vessel was lifted, disengaged herself from 

 the rock, and was towed by the ^fisherman to the strand, where she could be unloaded and 

 repaired. Fraissinet says he was handsomely rewarded for this. The reader will be amused to 

 learn that his reward consisted in being allowed to wear two sabres, (which is the badge of 

 elevated rank,) and to bear as his coat of arms a Dutch hat and two Butch tobacco pipes. "We 

 have never read in any narrative of the circumstance that he received any money with which to 

 support his rank. The Dutchmen and the American captain should have furnished that. If 

 the circumstances had been changed, and either Hollander or Yankee had raised the vessel for 

 the Japanese, it would have been very soon intimated to the natives that two swords with a 

 picture of a Dutch hat and two tobacco pipes afforded very inadequate compensation for such 

 a valuable service. We think it would scarcely have satisfied the Japanese mermaid maker, 

 had he been the fortunate fisherman instead of the modest Kiyemon. 



Iledicine. — All the writers on Japan agree in the statement that on the visit of the Dutch 

 president to Jeddo, his European physician, who accompanies him, is always visited by the 

 native physicians, and closely questioned on points jjurely professional. Their object is to gain 

 information. But they already know something. They have not, however, availed themselves 

 at all of j)Ost mortem examinations, either to investigate disease or to study anatomy. We 

 cannot suppose they are without opportunities of thus acquiring knowledge,, for we read that 

 after a criminal is executed it is not uncommon for his body to be hacked in pieces by the young 

 nobility, that they may try the temper and edge of their sword blades. But superstition is in 

 the way. To come into contact with death is deemed pollution. Without such examinations, it 

 is obvious that the knowledge of the physician and surgeon must be but imperfect at best. 



There are, however, in Japan, original medical works constantly appearing, and translations 

 are also made of all such as they can obtain in the Dutch language, which they best understand. 

 The European medical gentlemen, who have come in contact with their professional brethren of 

 Japan, report favorably of them ; and Dr. Siebold speaks with high praise of the zeal with 

 which the native physicians thronged around him, from all parts of the Empire, seeking to 

 enlarge the stores of their knowledge. He bears testimony also to their intelligence, as evinced by 

 the questions they asked. Acupuncture and moa^a burning are both used in Japan and are native 

 inventions. They have an original treatise on the first, and the proper cases for its use. Their 

 drugs are mostly animal and vegetable ; they are too little acquainted with chemistry to venture upon 

 mineral remedies. They study medical botany, however, with great attention, and their remedies 

 are said to be generally efficacious. Some of their medicinal preparations are very remarkable, 

 producing most singular effects. Of these there is one spoken of by Titsingh, who saw its 

 application and its consequences ; and from some of the oflicers of our own expedition we have 

 heard of this preparation, of which, we believe, they have brought home specimens. Titsingh thus 

 writes : ' ' Instead of enclosing the bodies of the dead in coffins of a length and breadth proportionate 

 to the stature and bulk of the deceased, they place the body in a tub, tliree feet high, two feet and 

 a half in diameter at the top, and two feet at bottom. It is difficult to conceive how the body of 

 a grown person can be compressed into so small a space, when the limbs, rendered rigid by 



