368 CHINA. 



of Dragons' bones, were long used as medicine in Europe. A 

 live Dragon was discovered in Sussex in 1614.* 



It is not so long since all kinds of nastiness, such as powdered 

 Mummy and album groscum were regularly used in English 

 medicine, as now by Chinese doctors. Sir Thomas Browne, 

 in his " Pseudodoxia Epidemica," published in 1646, although 

 he explodes many false notions in vogue at his day, as to the 

 Unicorn, yet gravely discusses the power, as antidotes to 

 poisons, of Unicorns,' Elks', and Deers' horns, and their effect 

 on epilepsy when taken as medicine. t 



In 1593, a committee of Doctors of Medicine of Augsburg, 

 after a careful examination of a specimen of the very rare drug, 

 the Unicorn's horn (Narwhal's tusk in this instance), in oider 

 to confirm their conclusion that the horn was real Monoceros 

 horn and not a forgery, gave an infusion of some of it to a 

 dog poisoned with arsenic, and on the recovery of the animal 

 were thoroughly convinced of the authenticity of the specimen. 

 Their report, duly signed, commences, " Quin etiam visum 

 est nobis, ad experientiam, rerum magistram tanquam KpiT-qptov 

 descendere."i In the work in which this experiment is 

 recorded, follows an account of another, in which a dram of 

 nux vomica was rendered harmless to a dog, by the action of 

 12 grains of the precious horn, whilst an exactly similar dog 

 died in half an hour, from the same dose without the antidote. 



My friend. Dr. J. F. Payne, has pointed out to me, that 

 Unicorn's horn, and the skull of a man who has died by a 

 violent death, appear as medicines in the Official Pharmacopoeia 

 of the College of Physicians of London, of 1678. Unicorn's 

 horn, human fat and human skulls, dogs' dung, toads, vipers 

 and worms, are retained in the same Pharmacopoeia for 1724. 

 A Committee revised the Pharmacopoeia in 1742. They still 

 retained in the list, centipedes, vipers, and lizards. The use 

 of grated human skull as medicine, by uninstructed persons, 

 survived in England as late as 1858 at least.§ 



* "True and Wonderful, a Discourse relating to a strange and mon- 

 strous Serpent or Dragon lately discovered and yet living, to the great 

 annoyance and divers slaughters both of men and cattell by his strong 

 and violent poison. In Sussex, two miles from Horsham, in a wood 

 called St. Leonard's Forest, and thirtie miles from London, this present 

 month of August, 1614." Printed at London, by John Trundle. In this 

 book a picture of the Dragon is given. It is in the form of a large lizard 

 with protruded barbed tongue and rudimentary wings. The dead 

 victims are strewed in front. The Dragon was nine feet in length. Its 

 principal haunt was at a place called Faygate. 



t Sir T. Browne's Works, edited by Wilkin, Vol. II. p. 503, London, 

 Pickering, 1836. 



\ " Museum Wormianum seu Historia Rerum Rariorum," pp. 2S6-287. 

 Olao Worm, Med. Doct. Amstelodami, 1655. 



§ Rev. T. F. Thiselton Dyer, " English Folk Lore." London, 1878. 



