Ch. XX.] CHINESE SUEGEET. 337 



a hump-backed Chinaman ; but in Singapore I noticed four 

 or five, and one hump-backed Kling. Effects of bad surgery 

 and neglect are not unfrequently seen in the form of horrid 

 ulcers, foul wounds, and carious bones ; and at Shanghai I 

 saw an unfortunate little boy sitting at the door-step with 

 both his feet cut off, and the bones protruding upwards of 

 an inch through the discoloured and ulcerated skin, which 

 was covered with flies ; but such a case as this was probably 

 a monument of the atrocities of the Tae-ping rebels, as the 

 Chiaese do not amputate surgically, and secondary amputa- 

 tion would much have ameliorated the poor boy's condition. 

 On another occasion I spoke with a Chinaman whose right 

 arm dangled uselessly at his side, wasted to mere skin and 

 bone, and looking as though it did not belong to him. His 

 shoulder had long since been dislocated into the axilla, and 

 the dislocation never having been reduced, the maimed limb 

 had wasted away for want of use, and a false joint had ulti- 

 mately been established. 



It can easily be imagined, in fact, that in a country where 

 surgery is at so low an ebb as in China, the unhappy 

 victims of accident or surgical disease are either by degrees 

 totally unfitted for active life, or pine away and die for want 

 of the necessary relief; and this may be the explanation of 

 their rare occurrence as pubHc spectacles. It is frightful to 

 contemplate the amount of suffering entailed upon such un- 

 fortunates, whose cases, through ignorance of the correct 

 mode of treatment, are neglected, until Nature slowly and 

 painfully performs an imperfect cure, or the unhappy victim 

 succTunbs. 



The Chinese, however, have a very proper respect for 

 barbarian surgery; and at Canton, the hospitaland dispen- 

 sary, established by the American medical mission, are daily 



