VOL. XIII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 633 



This cotton-like substance they form into a little cone, about the bulk of a pea; 

 or else in a paper roll it between their hands into a cylinder, to be divided into 

 little pellets for their purpose. The pulse of the place being felt, u{X)n it they 

 place the moxa, the basis of the cone next the skin, then taking care to keep 

 the body in a settled position, they light the apex of the pellet either with or- 

 dinary wood, or with an aromatic stick. The pellet does not wholly consume 

 into ashes, but leaves a little segment of its base on the part : a little blister is 

 hereby raised, of a cineritious colour, without much pain, giving vent to the 

 humours and wind. They burn sometimes even to 50 pellets on a place without 

 danger; and at last with success. To separate the eschar, garlic is applied for 

 24 hours. The rough side of a plantain leaf keeps the ulcer open ; the smooth 

 side heals it: cole- worts, betes, colts-foot, ivy, &c. are substituted for want 

 of plantain. 



Many of the Japanese use moxa twice or oftener in a year to prevent sick- 

 ness, as solemnly as Europeans purge or bleed. In the most grievous chronic 

 diseases, and even in persons emaciated by consumptions, as an arcanum they 

 burn in four points near the os sacrum, two on each side, lying in a direct 

 line crossing the spine at right angles. Analogous to this practice, in a long 

 digression, the author quotes out of Hippocrates many instances and precepts for 

 burning in most chronic cases. 



The whole art lies in designing the points to be burnt for each distemper; 

 which secret is in the hands of particular surgeons, who have formed rules to 

 direct them ; as also images in their houses marked in all those places that are 

 proper to be burnt. And to show the necessity of a due observing of proper 

 places, he asserts, on his own knowledge, that burning on the linea alba, a finger's 

 length below the navel, infallibly causes barrenness, especially in men; where- 

 fore that line is always avoided. Aside from it above the navel, burning, they 

 say, restores lost appetite, as also if moxa be applied to the shoulder blades. 

 For a gonorrhaea and weakness of the spermatic vessels, the parts about the 

 loins and the os sacrum are to be burnt ; for the colic, on the abdomen ; and 

 for the tooth-ach, on the chin at the commissure of the under jaw-bones. With 

 these and such like instances, and a receipt for hysterical lozenges, made of this 

 artemisia or mugwort, of constant use among the women of Japan, our author 

 concludes his discourse. 



Mantissa Schematica. Here the author gives four drawings of those images 

 the Japanese physicians keep in their houses, marked in those places which they 

 burn with moxa and perforate with their needle ; annexing the inscriptions be- 

 longing to those images, which contain a brief account of their physic and 

 anatomy. They use inwardly three plants, much extolled for their virtues, 



VOL. II. 4 M 



