388 THE DISEASES AND DISORDERS OF THE OX. 



old and very weird methods of treatment of the diseases 

 of animals. In one month's number of Mr. Jaraes Knowles' 

 review, the Nineteenth Century, for 1887, an article, entitled 

 ** Strange Medicines," is contributed by Miss C. F. Gordon 

 Gumming. Under this title the able writer brings forward 

 many very interesting facts indeed, while she compares the 

 methods of treatment of disease until quite recently generally 

 practised in Japan with those adopted by our ancestors in these 

 isles. Her remarks clearly prove that the early part of the 

 eighteenth century in our country shows very little, if any, 

 advancement in medical skill on the ignorance which prevailed 

 at the date of the Norman Conquest. While remarking that so 

 rapidly has the scientific study of medicine been taken up by 

 the Japanese medical practitioners, that the survival of a chemist 

 of the pure and unadulterated old school is quite remarkable, 

 she proceeds to describe the shop and stock-in-trade of one of 

 these remarkably interesting individuals, until recently the 

 representatives of the professors of the medical art in Japan. 



In the latter country these ancient relics are fast disappearing, 

 while in the Celestial Empire such empirics still hold undis- 

 puted sway. The Japanese vendor whose acquaintance was 

 made by Miss Gumming was a purveyor of curoyakee, i.e, 

 ** carbonised animals ; in other words, animals reduced to 

 charcoal and potted in small earthenware jars, to be sold as 

 medicine for the sick and suffering. Formerly all these animals 

 were kept alive in the back premises, and customers selected 

 the creature for themselves, and stood by it to see it baked and 

 burned on the spot, so that there could be no imposture or any 

 doubt as to the freshness of the charred medicine. Doubtless 

 some insensible foreign influence may account for the disap- 

 pearance of the menagerie of waiting victims and their crema-^ 

 tion ground. Now the zoological backyard has vanished, and 

 only the strange chemists' shops remain, like well-stored museums 

 wherein are ranged portions of the dried carcases of dogs and 

 deer, foxes and badgers, rats and mice, tigers and elephants* 

 The rarer the animal, and the farther it has travelled, the more 

 precious, apparently, are its virtues. From the roof hung 

 festoons of gigantic snake-skins, which certainly were foreign 

 importations from some land where pythons flourish." Miss- 

 Cumming saw one very fine piece of skin which, though badly 



