302 I Assembly 



ters are beautifully wrought, carved in relief and carefully gilded. 

 In the store are long counters, and chairs for customers to repose 

 in. The walls are covered with professional sentences, much re- 

 sembling in style the quack advertisements on the walls of our 

 large cities in France. Infallible remedies for syphilis (shanz tinz) 

 for rheumatism (fong shap). A paste made of an ass's skin. 



"Alas my dear father, is it not fine to come here to the end of the 

 world and find Charlatanism quackery triumphantly established here? 

 And it is far more shameless here than in France — for here the law 

 leaves the credulous public to take care of itself, never interfering 

 until the mischief is done. Some of the sentences written on the 

 walls of the apothecaries' shops are quite original. Here is one lit- 

 erally translated for me, by my friend Dr. Pittee of Macao — it cer- 

 tainly lacks neither sense nor appropriateness. ' A druggist ought 

 to have two eyes when he buys drugs, a physician who administers 

 them needs but one eye — but the patient who takes them ought to 

 be blind.' 



"In a shop in Canton, I noticed the following, taken at random, 

 from those on the walls. 'Stone is eternal, the tree lives many cen- 

 turies, by study of stones and trees I can give to a man a life as 

 long as theirs.' 



"Thoy make and sell enormous quantities of pills, of which they 

 have 500 different kinds. 



"They take a stag, h?ng him up until he dies a slow death, they take 

 off the skin, then pound the carcase in immense mortars, afterwards 

 they put in absorbing powders, and form the whole mass into pills. 

 They do not use syrop or alcohol. They all read the great volumes 

 constituting an Encyclopedia of medical knov^ledge and China Nat- 

 ural History, entitled Pan-tsao-canz-mon, or the Chinese Herbal, 

 which ought to be studied in France, with the greatest care. There 

 are 52 volumes. 



"They use excessive care in curing plants, so that we were aston- 

 ished to see the buds and flowers still having their natural colors, 

 the leaves entire and still green. One of their writers has said (Sing- 

 Tse-Maio,) that the ancient physicians took care to cultivate, gather, 

 dry and prepare the vegetable drugs, and healed nine patients out of 

 ten, while in modern times, physicians were unable to cure more than 

 half their patients. 



