ON CHINESE PHARMACY. 
129 
ART. XLII. — ON CHINESE PHARMACY. 
The drug shops of China are large, and are commodiously 
fitted up. They have a great array of drawers and jars 
arranged much in the same way as in England; glass ves- 
sels are very rare. Different departments are allotted to 
separate classes of medicaments ; care is taken to keep 
things in order ; and there is a degree of neatness and me 
thod in their appearance which would not be discreditable 
to a London laboratory. They do not seek notice by party- 
coloured bottles and cabalistic signs, which make so great a 
figure in the windows of some English medicine venders, 
but are rigorously plain, and, as far as mere appearance is 
concerned, appropriate. 
On examining the contents of the drawers, boxes, &c, 
few things were observed identical with, or similar to, the 
medicinal substances employed in Europe. Camphor, rhu- 
barb, and liquorice, were conspicuous among recognised 
articles; but our familiar friends in the shape of purging 
salts, calomel, tinctures, &c, were nowhere found. Even 
opium, of which so much is used as a luxury, does not ap- 
pear to be admitted in the materia medica ; at least it could 
not be traced in any form in the drug-shops. Cinnabar, or 
a substance much resembling it. is a favorite remedy in 
many external diseases, and it consequently is a prominent 
article in every collection. 
On the Druggists' counters are ample boxes containing 
preparations for such purposes as these — to arrest cholera 
instantly, to communicate strength directly, to infuse cour- 
age, to excite love, and to confer the faculty of being loved, 
and so on, in proportion to the wants and wishes of indivi- 
duals. This is sufficiently ridiculous, but is not more so in 
reality than the pretensions to similar efficacy constantly 
VOL. XIII. NO. II. 12 
