THE PHOGRESS OF SCIENCE IN CHINA. 
381 
the powerlessness of those practitioners in cases of real illness, or 
to ignore the superior skill and science of European physicians. 
The importance of health is sufficient to dissipate all prejudices, 
and men who would as soon cut their children’s throats as 
allow them to attend a mission school, do not hesitate to apply 
to the foreign i-sangs for advice for themselves, their wives, 
and their families. Of this disposition on the part of the natives 
advantage has been taken by the various missionary societies, 
and hospitals have been established at Peking and at many 
places along the coast, where the good effected has been incal- 
culable. Not only have they been the means of disseminating 
throughout the empire a general Knowledge of the superiority 
of foreign medical practice, but they have acted as schools of 
medicine for a number of intelligent natives who, while assisting 
the medical men in the treatment of the patients, have gradu- 
ated in the science. The printing press, also, has done good 
work in opening the eyes of Chinamen to a knowledge of the 
anatomy of the human frame, the causes of disease, and its 
cure. Four works by Dr. Hobson deserve special notice, from 
their intrinsic value and from the favour with which they have 
been received by native scholars. His first production, in 
1851, a “Treatise on Physiology,” was extremely popular, and 
was republished at Canton by a local magnate, accompanied 
by a laudatory preface. Six years later he brought out the 
“ First Lines of the Practice of Surgery in the West,” which he 
illustrated with upwards of 400 woodcuts carefully copied from 
the works of Liston, Ferguson, Druitt, Erichsen and others. A 
“ Treatise on Midwifery and Diseases of Children ” followed in 
1858, and in the same year he published his “ Practice of Medi- 
cine and Materia Medica.” All these works met with the most 
unqualified success, not only in China but in Japan also, where 
they were reprinted with copious notes. Other works by 
Koberts, Kerr, Lobscheid and others, have aided in the same 
good cause, and are already bearing fruit by giving an im- 
petus to scientific enquiry, and by breaking down the prejudices 
which stand in the way of the introduction of other branches of 
Western knowledge into China. 
The study of the geography of the Empire, and of the struc- 
ture of its language, has occupied the attention of some mo- 
dem scholars, and the works of many of them are marked by deep 
research and great critical acumen. But their indisposition to 
enquire into the languages, history and geography, of foreign 
countries, narrows the field of their observation, and diminishes 
the interest that is felt in the results of their labours. 
From the nature of things, however, the sciences, and espe- 
cially the non-applied sciences, must for many years to come 
make but very slow progress in China. Within a narrow 
