the second, it becomes oval or spherical; in the third, the head and extremities begin to manifest themselves; in the fifth, the outlines of the trunk and head are visible and the intellect develops; in the sixth and seventh, these become more evident; in the eighth, the child becomes restless; in the ninth, tenth, eleventh or twelfth, it is born. Before birth, however, the child turns itself over (culbute), i. e.

"The child, who sat with the head erect, the mouth directed toward the spine, praying therewith to God, and beholding the heaven, the earth, and the regions beneath,"

inverts itself. so that the head now lies beneath, a doctrine which recently, as the result of investigations upon the changes of position of the fœtus during pregnancy, has received confirmation and acceptance, although of a more limited and precise character. Regular accouchement requires the aid of four stout women only. If, however, the position of the child is faulty (in which are included footling, back, breech, side and breast presentations, as well as presentations of the arms, head, hands and feet together), it must be either improved by the physician, or the labor must be terminated artificially. The same must be done in the case of an unusually large head, in contracted pelvis, or in false positions incapable of correction. The sexual life and sphere of woman, in conditions of both health and disease, among the Indians, as among all other oriental people, are subjects of earnest study.

Their special pathology includes among internal diseases, rheumatism, gout, hæmorrhoids, inflammations, fever, catarrh, diabetes mellitus (first mentioned among the Greeks by Demetrius of Apamea), diarrhoea, jaundice, cough, verminous diseases, epilepsy, mania a potu, the exanthemata, dysentery, phthisis etc.

Diagnosis is effected by the aid of the senses and by examination of the sick, and the physician was expected to pay especial attention to the pulse, the bodily temperature, the color of the skin, the urine and fæces, the eyes, the strength of the voice, and the noise of the respiration (!).

The symptomatology of the Indians is very complete, though the oriental descriptions sound strange, and the forms of disease have no analogues with us. "Disease of the heart" manifests different symptoms according to its origin

"If the heart-disease has originated from the air, the heart becomes strained and tossed to and fro, it is agitated, lacerated, rent and shaken. Thirst, heat, warmth, inflammation and cardiac fatigue, arise in bilious heart-disease. Flatulence, despondency, sweating, dryness of the mouth, weight, salivation, disgust for food, stupor, lack of passion, a sweet taste in the mouth, arise when the heart is diseased from mucus. Abdominal colic, expectoration, rigors, pain, eructation, vertigo, disgust for food, redness of the eyes and emaciation may arise when the disease depends upon worms. Vertigo, lassitude, faintness and emaciation are symptoms when this disease originates in worms, but they also appear in patients affected with both worms and mucus."

The therapeutics of the Indians are guided by the curability or incurability of the disease. If the disease belongs to the incurable class the

physicians do not take the patient under treatment at all, but advise him plainly, honestly and unselfishly,

"To go forth upon a narrow foot-path to the invisible north-eastern tongue of land, to live on water and air, until this earthly tabernacle sinks down and his soul is united with God." (Haeser.)

Herodotus similarly relates: 'Whosoever among the Indians becomes sick goes out into a desert and lays himself down there. No one troubles himself about him, whether he be sick or dead."1

If, however, the disease is curable, attention must be paid in the cure to the disease itself, the season, the organic fire, the age, bodily habit, the strength, the intelligence, according to the Indian ideas the stupid are cured more quickly than the intelligent, because, thinks the open-hearted Susruta, they are more obedient.-nature, idiosyncrasies, remedies and the regions of the earth. In "disease of the heart" the cure, with all due regard to the above circumstances, is managed somewhat as follows:

ents.

"If the heart is diseased through the air, the patient should be first of all anointed, then take an emetic, and thereafter a drink, consisting of numerous ingrediWhen now he is regularly "purified", he is given food, consisting of old rice in meat-broth with butter, then an enema, and finally another emetic. If the heart is corrupted by mucus, the patient first of all takes an emetic, then the drink recommended in heart-disease depending upon air, next antidysenteric food, or a purgative; finally the physician skilful in the administration of enemata, gives him an enema of oil and Pavonia odorata." 2

The Materia Medica of the Indians is most copious, in fact almost as rich as ours of to-day. It embraces remedies from the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, together with the arts of magic. Remedies are used both externally and internally; they are divided into pharmaco-dynamic classes, and are either simple, or (as is more frequently the case) exceedingly complex in their nature. Venesection and cupping, especially the former, play an important part, as well as means for exciting and strengthening the desires and delights of love in both the feeble and the stronggenuine oriental specialty. Even inhalations into the mouth and nose by the aid of tubes are known. The ancient Indians had hospitals. Inoculation of the natural and artificial virus of small-pox was practised in a prophylactic view. The Brahmans always performed this operation in the

a

1. Even at the present day persons hopelessly ill, or supposed to be in a hopeless condition, are carried to the banks of the Ganges, where their relatives fill the mouth and nose of the invalid with the sacred mud of this stream, and then abandon him to the waters. If the persons thus exposed chance to recover, they are no longer acknowledged by their relatives, but are regarded as dead. They are then compelled to take refuge in the "Villages of the dead men" (found in the vicinity of large cities), and there to prolong a wretched life. (Prof. Ed. Hildebrandt, "Reise um die Erde", 6 ed., Berlin, 1879).

2. Such "Indian cures" frequently enough with us also attract the common people, and from their manifest activity procure a thriving business.

The "Pavonia odorata" is an Indian plant of the order of Malvaceæ. (H.)

beginning of the warm season.

The skin was rubbed, a few incisions made, and virus of the preceding year, with which pledgets of cloth had been saturated, was bound upon the abraded surface. The persons thus inoculated were compelled to remain in the open air (Indian method of inocula tion). Boys were inoculated upon the outside of the forearm, girls upon the upper arm. Vaccination is now obligatory in the larger cities, but elsewhere the old plan is generally carried out.

Dietetics are carried to the extreme, and carefully regulated. The Indians are forbidden to eat meat.

Their knowledge of toxicology is considerable. Such an acquaintance too with natural history as is necessary to a knowledge of remedial agents, is possessed by the Indians in a remarkable degree. On the other hand, anatomy forms the weakest side of Indian medicine.

This, however, ought not to occasion much surprise when we consider the prohibition of contact with the dead-an offence always to be expiated, though only lightly. The method of preparing bodies and the sole instruments employed in this process are very original, but certainly not adapted to afford a good insight into the structure of the human body.

"Let the physician leave a corpse fastened, together with its receptacle, in a brook, to macerate in a clear place, a corpse which has a body uninjured, uncor rupted by poison, unshaken by chronic disease, unhandled a hundred times, unclothed, and draw it out when maceration is completed. The corpse at the expiration of seven days should then be rubbed with pieces of bark; he can then with his eyes see the skin and all the external and internal parts."

These pieces of bark1 form the entire dissecting case of the Indians. From such methods of preparation, singular views in regard to anatomy' ought not to surprise us. Accordingly the human body consists of six members (the four extremities, the trunk and head), and has 7 membranes, 7 segments, 70 vessels, 500 muscles, 900 sinews, 300 bones, 212 joints, but only 24 nerves, and 9 organs of sense, etc. The vessels contain not only blood, but they carry also bile, mucus and air about through the body. Of the nerves, which take their origin from the navel, 10 ascend, 10 descend and 4 run transversely. As soon as the 10 ascending nerves reach the heart, however, they divide into 30.

The physiology of the Indians supplies something more than such fanciful theories. They distinguish excretion and digestion, chyme and chyle, from the latter of which the blood, after birth, originates. The natural heat is regulated by the nerves, which also control the motion of the breath, urine, blood, semen, and menstrual-blood in their several channels. They assume the existence of a vital force which, it is true, is recognized by its effects only, but which animates all portions of the body etc.

To sum up our judgment of Indian medicine, we must assign to it, at all events, a superiority over the Egyptian and the Jewish; indeed, it may claim even the very first rank among those examples of medical culture

1. Wise says a brush made of reeds, hair, or bamboo-bark. (H.)

which have not experienced a continuous development. That it was not far behind Greek medicine, both in the extent of its doctrines and in its internal elaboration, furnishes us only a very superficial comparison.' It cannot fail to extort our admiration when we consider the very early period in which it developed and attained so high a grade, and when we take into account also the people who accomplished so great a work. Yet we can never measure it by our standard of to-day. Such a course would be as false as unhistorical.

V. THE MEDICINE OF THE CHINESE AND JAPANESE.

If we may consider it a characteristic of the ancient, as well as modern Indo-Germanic peoples, that they have all developed after the type of the organic kingdom, in other words, that their civilization has sprung up, developed, bloomed, decayed, and finally perished (sometimes together with the people itself); on the other hand, the Mongolian races have followed the type of the inorganic kingdom. They and their civilization, like mountains, having attained a certain limited height, have existed there, inflexible and almost unchanged, for thousands of years. Thus they are more enduring, and defy longer time and destruction. so that up to the present time the dictum that to stand still is to die, seems in their case to lack verification. Their very inflexibility preserves them from the diseases of development, and from ultimate destruction. The germ of their civilization and their forms remain unchanged. This, however, has been possible only from the fact that they have, up to the present time, been able to preserve themselves from intellectual, and, if possible still more strictly, from physical intermixture with foreign races."

The people of Kong-fu-tse (died B. C. 479), the Chinese, quick-witted indeed and fanciful, but wanting in art, in the higher sense of that term, are commonly regarded as the type of the Mongolian race. Their literature. is apparently immense, though but little of it is known to the outside 1. A transfer of Greek medicine to India is still assumed, so that the originality of Indian medicine would be doubtful. In support of this assumed transmission are adduced the facts that, even in antiquity, intercourse with farther Asia occurred (Solomon, Megasthenes, Alexander the Great, etc.), and that active commercial associations existed even in Roman times. A number of gold darics, found near Benares some few years ago, furnish positive evidence of such intercourse. Pliny, however, asserts that more than twenty millions of dollars in gold and silver flowed into India annually in the way of barter. (Max Müller.) Actual transmission of scientific information from Greece to India on the subject of astronomy can be proven, according to Müller. Aryabhata (A. D. 476) taught the revolution of the earth upon its axis, and explained the origin of solar and lunar eclipses; indeed actual Greek names are found in the poet Kâlidâsa, whose poetry displays evidences of Grecian influence. Hence Müller speaks of the

"Indian era of the renaissance".

2. The recent discovery of Roman imperial coins in the vicinity of Canton, is satisfactory evidence of commercial intercourse between the ancient Romans and the Chinese.

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world. Judges of it, like Von der Gabelentz, affirm, however, that it demonstrates the activity of the general law of development, even among the Mongolians, though the course of this development may be slower than among the Indo-Germanic peoples.

That the Chinese possess an ancient civilization, entirely characteristic, and in its way even highly developed, is well known. While, however, they themselves place the beginning of their political life many thousand years before the Christian era, it is certain that their reliable history reaches back no farther than a few centuries before Christ. They, however, ascribe to the emperor Huang-ti (B. C. 2637) a treatise on medicine still extant, and entitled Nuy-kin (Neiszin, Heidsin), probably a forgery of the beginning of our era. In like manner they ascribe to the emperor Chin-nong (B. C. 2699) a kind of pharmacopoeia or catalogue of the herbs of the celestial kingdom, and they further relate that Tsching-wang, the second emperor of the Tsin dynasty (founded by Tschwang-siang-wang, the builder of the Chinese wall, B. C. 248), authorized the destruction of all books, except those treating of agriculture and medicine, in order to abolish every tradition of custom and law. The whole story, however, is very untrustworthy.

The ancient and unlimited liberty of choosing one's occupation in China, which contrasts so strongly with our own custom, has resulted in making the medical profession perfectly enormous. From the earliest times, therefore, there have been found several physicians in every village, as has recently become the case with us. In China any person may be a physician to the poor and the faithful (that is to the masses abandoned to every impostor), without having given any previous evidence of his professional competency. Anyone, too, may assume the title of physician.

Recently, however, the Chinese government has had its eye upon the physicians. "The doctors", so runs an edict of 1882, "have the bad habit of not visiting their patients before one o'clock in the afternoon. Some of them even smoke opium and drink tea" (we should say spirits) "until late in the evening. These are abuses, which the government will under no circumstances permit. Doctors must visit their patients at all times; if necessary, they must visit them several times a day. They must think more about them, and less about their fees. The public and all officials are notified that a physician, who does not come at once when called, can claim only the half of his fee and his expenses. If you physicians put off your calls, you manifest your godlessness and sin against yourselves." ("Unsere Zeit".)

The court-physicians only, as a matter of precaution, are compelled to pass an examination before a college at Pekin. Physicians belonging to old (medical) families are held in special esteem. There are also in China 1. According to Kwotse Kien, Pekin possesses an immense library, founded in the 12-13th century. Every city has its state-library under the administration of mandarins. Besides these there are private and circulating libraries, the latter of which, in contrast with our similar institutions, are patronized only by the lowest classes, and chiefly by women and girls. Chinese ghost-stories and lovetales, romances, plays etc. form the literary provender of the patrons of the circulating libraries even in China.