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famous in history, and of different tribes of men. is introduced the subject of the Chinese cycle (which rather belongs to the first department), and of the numerical combinations of Fo-hy. Next come buildings; furniture; implements used in husbandry, manufactures, and the arts of peace; arms and warlike weapons; woodcuts in anatomy; costumes; games of skill; specimens of ancient inscriptions; botany and natural history, as applicable to medicine; active sports and exercises; specimens of coins and money.

The actual state of the sciences in China may perhaps be ranked with their condition in Europe some time previous to the adoption of the inductive method in philosophy. The constitutional ingenuity and industry of the people has led them to fall upon various practical results, in spite, as it would seem, of a feature in their character and habits which is opposed to the progress of knowledge. They profess to set no value on abstract science, apart from some obvious and immediate end of utility. Among ourselves, the practical application of scientific discoveries is sometimes long subsequent to the discoveries themselves, which might perhaps never have been made, had not science been followed up through its by paths for its own sake merely, or with a very remote view to utility in practice. The Chinese always estimate such matters by their immediate and apparent cui bono. Dr. Abel relates, that, after satisfying a mandarin in reply to his questions concerning some of our useful manufactures, he took occasion to mention that we had metals which on coming in contact with water burst into flame. "I had some potassium with me (he adds), and was desirous of showing its properties to him. He immediately inquired concerning its uses, and, when these could not be very satisfactorily explained to him, looked too contemptuously to induce me to venture

an experiment." And yet this discovery of the metallic base of potash was one result of the investigations of Sir Humphry Davy, whose practical applications of his scientific discoveries to useful and beneficial purposes were of such inestimable value and importance.

A surprising enumeration might be made of instances in which the Chinese appear to have stumbled by mere chance upon useful inventions, without the previous possession of any scientific clue. Cases, however, occur in which it may be fairly suspected that they were indebted to the European missionaries. Without knowing anything, for instance, of that theory of optics which treats of the convergence and divergence of rays of light by lenses of different shapes, they use both convex and concave glasses, or rather crystals, to assist their sight. We noticed in the last chapter that they possess glass in a very coarse and inferior state, and that at Canton they sometimes melt down broken glass from Europe. In spectacles, however, the want is supplied, all over the empire, by the use of rock crystal. This is ground with the powder of corundum; and if anything could prove the Chinese spectacles to be original inventions, or not borrowed from Europe, it would be their very singular size and shape, as well as the strange way of putting them on. The annexed cut represents a pair of these primitive optics, slung over the ears with silken strings and weights, and imparting by their immense size a most sapient appearance to the wearer.

For checking the glare of the sun, they make use of a mineral which they call Cha-she, or "tea-stone," from the resemblance of its transparent hue to a weak infusion of black tea. This, in all probability, is a smoky quartz, or silex, allied to the cairngorum of Scotland. In some instances the Chinese have been known to attempt slavish

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copies of European telescopes; but a little science became requisite in the construction of instruments consisting of compound lenses, and they accordingly failed. When, however, a few specimens of Sir David Brewster's optical toy, the kaleidoscope, first reached Canton, these were easily imitated. The Chinese became exceedingly taken with them; vast numbers were immediately manufactured on the spot, and sent up the country, under the appropriate name of Wân-hud-tung, or "tubes of ten thousand flowers."

The jargon employed in their pseudo-science, and the singular resemblance which this bears to the condition of physical knowledge, not very long ago, even in our own country, is deserving of some remark. It is pretty generally known that, within a comparatively recent period of our history, the sciences of medicine and astrology were very gravely combined. A rather handsome monument in Mortlake churchyard, dated as late as 1715, bears a Latin inscription to the memory of "John Partridge, Astrologer and Doctor of Medicine, who made physic for

two kings and one queen, to wit, Charles II., William III., and Queen Mary." It was the deplorable condition of the healing art about or a little before that period, in France, also, that exposed it to the unmerciful ridicule of Molière. It is likely that most readers may not have fallen in with a thick quarto volume, dated 1647, and entitled 'A modest Treatise of Astrologie, by William Lilly."* The work is dedicated to Bolstrod Whitlock, Esq., Member of Parliament, and among other matter contains "Astrological aphorisms beneficiall for Physicians ;"-as, "He that first enters upon a cure in the hour of Mars shall find his patient disaffected to him, and partly disdain and reject his medicines, his pains ill-rewarded, and his person slighted." In the same work are expounded the supposed connexions between the several planets and the parts of the body: "He will be infinitely oppressed (says this learned Theban) who in the hour of Mars shall first get an hot disease, and in the hour of Saturne a cold one;""When Jupiter is author of the sicknesse, he demonstrates ill-affection of the liver ;"-" Mars being the cause of a feaver, and in Leo, shows ebolition or a boyling of the humours, continuall burning feavers, whose originall cause springs from the great veines near the heart.”†

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* The person ridiculed by Butler under the name of Sidrophel, who is made to defend his art in the following convincing manner :

"Is it not ominous in all countries

When crows and ravens croak upon trees?

The Roman senate, when within

The city walls an owl was seen,

Did cause their clergy, with lustrations,

(By 'r synod call'd humiliations,)

The round-fac'd prodigy t' avert

From doing town and country hurt :

And if an owl have so much power,

Why should not planets have much more?" &c.

They have also some vague notions of the humoral pathology, long since exploded in this country, but alluded to in the above ex

Compare this with the following scheme of Chinese physics, on which are based all their medical as well as other theories, and in which will be perceived precisely the same relations as those noticed in the foregoing quotations from Lilly.

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In treating of the planets and their significations, turne (quoth Lilly) is cold and dry, melancholic, earthly ;" Jupiter governeth all infirmities in the liver; of colours, sea-green or blew, a mixt yellow or green;"" Mars, in nature hot and dry, he delighteth in red colour, and in those savours which are bitter, sharp, and burn the tongue;" "Venus, in colours she signifieth white;" "Mercury, in the elements he is the water." The several relations are here identical, and all this looks very much as if the philosophy of our forefathers had been derived intermediately from China. It is this easy plan of systematizing without experiment that has kept the latter country in the dark, and infested every department of its physical knowledge; while the inductive philosophy recommended in the Novum Organon of Bacon has done such wonders in Europe. As a specimen of Chinese reasoning, nothing can well be

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tracts. They talk (as Dr. Abel correctly states) of ulcers being outlets to noxious matter, and divide diseases and remedies into two classes, hot and cold, depending greatly on purgatives for driving out the heat of the body."

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