Medical notes on China / by John Wilson.

  • Wilson, John, 1788-1870
Date:
MDCCCXLVI [1846]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Medical notes on China / by John Wilson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by King’s College London. The original may be consulted at King’s College London.

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    • 258 that of worship. In addition to soothsayers, there are found with- in the walls dealers in sweet and other meats, and players at petty games, and on a stage, facing the altar, and long an-ay of idols, parties of scenic performers, dressed gaudily, and strutting, and mouthing, in the most approved Thespian fashion. The temples are the only established places of theatrical representation, which has no resemblance to the religious dramas formerly exhibited in Christian churches ; and the show-gods are content, through their degraded ministers to share the sanctuary with gamesters, gluttons, impostors, and mountebanks. The Mandarins and other great men convert them lilcewise into caravansaries, when they want such accommodation. The Chinese pharmacopeia, or rather materia medica, is, in ac- cordance with what was stated above, a work of great magnitude, a brief epitome of it in the writer's possession, extending to up- wards of ] ,300 octavo pages. Like all their other devices, it lays claims to great antiquity, and is represented as a perfect composi- tion, omitting nothing that is curative, and admitting nothing that is useless, or can injure. The whole is divided into six books, which are subdivided into chapters and sections in the following manner: Book I.—Treats of grasses : Chap. No. 1. Of those growing on hills . . . 55 II. „ growing in marshes ... 35 III. „ fragrant ..... 58 IV. „ poisonous .... 29 V. „ spreading and creeping . . 28 VI. „ aquatic ..... 7 „ growing on stones ... 6 ,, mosses ..... 8 Book II.—Treats of trees : I. Of fragrant woods ..... 25 II. high growing trees .... 26 III. free growing ..... 20