INTERESTING TO SINGERS 31 
one’s memory the mould has covered them for years.” — 
‘< Scrapper Halpin,” Scribner’s Magazine, 1903, p. 188-89. 
Medicines of all kinds are very popular in China, and 
the Chinese experts themselves believe they operate or 
affect the patient by their taste; thus, “all sour medicines 
are capable of impeding and retaining ; bitter ones cause 
looseness and warmth; sweet ones again possess the 
qualities of strengthening, harmonising, and warming. 
Acids disperse and prove emollient, while salt medicines 
possess the properties of descending; they act also on 
hard and tasteless substances, open the pores, and pro- 
mote healthy discharges.” Thus a Chinese physician 
explains the use of the five tastes. As a fact, indeed, 
the present state of materia medica or of the pharmacopceia 
in China is pretty much what it was in Europe three or 
four centuries ago. 
Ammonia (spirits of) and variously perfumed aromatic 
vinegar go to the formation of what is called ‘“‘ smelling- 
salts.” 
The vinaigrette was the descendant of the pomander, 
and the ancestor of the modern scent-holding charms. 
They were made of silver or in gold, with jewels or 
stones, and were chased elegantly or more rarely en- 
amelled, and were to many ladies as much in fashion as 
the fan itself, being carried on all state occasions. Mrs 
Head and other collectors of bric-a-brac or bijouterie have 
beautiful collections of them. 
«<The old-time pomander, we are told, held a ball of 
paste made of aromatic gums pounded with rose-water 
and blended with wax, and occasionally with apple pulp, 
but this was replaced in the vinaigrette by a bit of fine 
sponge saturated with vinegar made fragrant by the 
infusion of herbs and spices, the smell of which was 
certainly more refreshing and less clogging than the strong 
and somewhat sickly sweet perfumes contained in our 
twentieth-century ‘ scent charms.’” 
