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liquor is clarified and used as wine. If the spirit be wanted, the vinous liquor then becomes subjected to the alembic. We may, among other matters, mention their manufacture of the sulphate of iron, as witnessed by Dr. Abel: "a quantity of hepatic iron pyrites, in small pieces, mixed with an equal quantity of coal in the same state, being placed together in a heap, the whole is covered with a coating of lime-plaster. In a short time great action takes place in the mass, accompanied by the extrication of much heat and smoke, which is allowed to go on until it has spontaneously ceased. The heap is then broken up and put into water, which is boiled until considerably reduced in volume, and then evaporated in shallow vessels." Very pure crystals of sulphate are said to be thus produced.

In 1821 Dr. Morrison adopted the idea of establishing near his own house at Macao, with the co-operation of Mr. Livingstone, the assistant-surgeon to the British factory, a dispensary for the relief of Chinese patients; and (with a view to obtaining at the same time some knowledge of the native practice) he purchased about eight hundred volumes on their medicine and pharmacopoeia, and engaged the attendance of a native doctor at his dispensary. Without applying for a single subscription from individuals, hundreds of Chinese were relieved of disease and suffering under various forms, and more than three hundred of these made very grateful acknowledgments for renovated health.* The liberal medical establishment of the East India Company in China being broken up, the English surgeons subsist on reduced emoluments, and, being no longer able to distribute medicine gratis to strangers, are obliged to send in their * Chinese Gleaner, vol. iii. p. 7.

VOL. II.

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apothecaries' bills. The time, besides, which might formerly be devoted to liberal inquiries into the state of medical knowledge in the country, must now be absorbed by the pressing calls of their business. Another class of men, however, the medical missionaries, have sprung up (especially Dr. Parker, the American), and these have not only conferred the most extensive benefits on the Chinese, but greatly exalted the estimation of European science and benevolence.

The account of the native practitioner who attended at Dr. Morrison's dispensary under the observation of Mr. Livingstone was favourable as to his intelligence and general character. To all those particular cases in which mercury is a specific he conducted himself with some severity, and generally refused to prescribe for them. This branch of practice, he declared, was commonly declined by the regular members of the Chinese faculty, being in the hands of barber-surgeons, who use, externally, a preparation of three ingredients, namely, mercury, arsenic, and what is supposed to be a sublimate of quicksilver in powder. The author of the Pun-tsaou, or great work on materia medica, states it to be above a thousand years since mercury, which they call "water-silver" (literally hydrargyrum), became famous. One of its most legitimate uses at present is as a vermifuge, or anthelmintic; and it is also used in diseases of the skin arising from the presence of animalculæ.

The Chinese themselves are not ignorant of institutions where the sick are attended gratis. One was found at Shanghae. A crowd waited on the outside to receive their tickets of admission; with these they proceeded in turn to the interior hall, where a number of doctors were seated at separate tables, feeling pulses and asking questions. One clerk noted down the symptoms, and another

wrote the prescriptions, dispensed gratuitously. The whole was very well conducted.*

In addition to the ancient use of mercury in medicine, the Chinese appear to have been acquainted with the sulphate of soda (known in Europe under the name of Glauber's salt) about twelve centuries ago. Its notoriety is said to have been occasioned by the following circumstance. The reigning emperor heard that there lived somewhere in his dominions a disciple of Laou-tsze,† one of those alchemists who for so many centuries had been in search of the elixir of immortality-a pursuit which has in China produced effects similar to those resulting from the hunt after the philosopher's stone in Europe. Being of great age, the professor appeared to realize in his own person the virtues of his nostrums, and he was accordingly summoned to court and examined. The alchemist attributed his longevity to the use of the "bright powder of Heuen," as it was called after his own name, just in the way that Glauber's salt was named from its German discoverer. It is valued at present by the Chinese as a cleanser and purifier of the system, in accordance with their doctrine of "hot and cold humours."

Proceed we now from medicine to another subject. In the science of numbers, and in geometry, the Chinese have, as usual, nothing to teach us; being, on the contrary, indebted for a good deal to Europe, as may be seen from the logarithmic tables and other works prepared for the Emperor Kâng-hy by the Jesuits. Their arithmetic, as well as their weights and measures, proceed universally on the decimal scale; and decimal fractions are their vulgar fractions, or those in common use. It is remarkable that the single exception to this consists in their kin, or market

* China since the Peace, p. 62.

† Whose sect is described in the sixteenth chapter.

ing pound weight, which, like ours, is divided into sixteen parts. It is most probable that both originated in the facilities afforded by the binary division into halves,

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quarters, eighths, and sixteenths. The sexa

gesimal division of the great circle was early borrowed by the Chinese from the Arabians, and of course used by the missionaries in the construction of their trigonometrical map of the empire. No algebraic knowledge is to be found in China, while it is certain that the Hindoo attainments in algebra were much superior to their astronomical science, and bear, besides, all the features of originality, which the latter does not.

The Chinese numbers are written in words at length, that is, unlike the Arabic system of numeration, where the powers of the numbers increase or diminish decimally according to po

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sition. This inconvenience is got over, in calculation, by the assistance of a little apparatus called a Suan

pán, or “calculating dish," having balls of wood or ivory strung upon wires in separate columns, of which one column represents units, with a decimal increase and diminution to the left and right, as in our system of numeration. Each ball above the longitudinal division of the board. represents five; and each ball below it stands for one. The number represented in the cut is therefore 6817, and, if there were any decimal parts, these would be ranged to the right of the units. At Canton they sometimes write down numbers in abbreviated marks, and place them, like our Arabic figures, in numerical order; but still, in arithmetical operations, the above machine is always used, and seems never to have been superseded. Its chief disadvantage is this, that no traces remain of the operation after it is concluded, which, in the event of error, necessitates the work being recommenced de novo.

The Chinese books contain a diagram which in a manner represents the mathematical truth enunciated by the 47th proposition of the first book of Euclid. This, however, is not demonstrated mathematically (which requires reference to preceding propositions in the same book), but by construction or measurement. In a right-angled triangle, whose sides are as 5, 4, 3, the squares are as 25, 16, and 9; and it is only when the sides are in these exact proportions that such a clumsy sort of

proof can be given of the proposition, that "the square of the hypothenuse equals the sum of the squares of the other two sides," or 25=16+9. Mr. Barrow has observed that the open and closed points connected by lines, and said

by the Chinese to have been found on the back of the

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