NOTES ON CHINESE MATERIA MEDICA. 215 



Specimen Medicince Sinicce relate chiefly to medical subjects, and 186O-62. 

 especially to the Chinese doctrine of the pulse. One section, 

 however, of 30 pages, attributed to Boym, is entitled Medicamenta Chinese Sec- 

 Simplicia quce a Chinensibus ad usum medicum adhibentur. It 

 is an unclassified catalogue of 289 drugs, giving of each the 

 Chinese name written after the Portuguese orthography, but 

 without the Chinese characters; to this succeeds a brief descrip- 

 tion, chiefly as regards medicinal properties, which are expressed 

 according to Chinese ideas. Occasionally the author is able to 

 add the European name. 



Incomparably more important and useful than Cleyer's Speci- 

 men is a little work published at St. Petersburg in 1856, for a 

 copy of which I am indebted to the kindness of Professor 

 Horaninow. It is entitled Catalogus Medicamentorum Sinensium 

 quce Pekini comparanda et determinanda curavit Alexdnder Tar- 

 tarinov, Doctor Medicince, Medicus Missionis Rossicce Pekinensis 

 spatio annorum 1840 1850. (Petropoli, 1856, 8vo.) It is, as 

 its title implies, the catalogue of a collection of Chinese drugs 

 obtained in Pekin by Dr. Tatarinov, physician to the Eussian Tartarinov 

 mission in that capital, which drugs, as we learn from the preface, 

 were subsequently examined and for the most part determined by 

 Dr. Paul Horaninow, professor of Materia Medica at St. Petersburg. 

 With the exception of the title-page and preface, which are in 

 type, the catalogue is in lithograph, and forms a thin octavo of 

 65 pages. The Chinese characters for each name are given, and 

 their sound expressed both in Eussian and English writing- 

 characters. The arrangement is alphabetical, according to the 

 names written after the Eussian orthography. The name of 

 each drug, so far as it could be determined, is given in Latin 

 without note or comment. The catalogue includes the names of 

 500 substances. 



Although these two are the only European works with which 

 I am acquainted that professedly treat of Chinese Materia 

 Medica, there are some other valuable sources of information, 

 which are too well known to require more than the briefest 

 notice ; such are the Flora Cochinchinensis of Loureiro, a work 

 in which the medicinal properties of many plants of Southern 



