surgery to this other qualifications. He was skilled in the use of
acupuncture and cautery; but if these failed he would render his patient
unconscious by a dose of hashish, and then operate surgically. He is
said to have diagnosed a case of diseased bowels by the pulse alone, and
then to have cured it by operation. He offered to cure the headaches
of a famous military commander of the day by opening his skull under
hashish; but the offer was rudely declined. This story serves to show,
in spite of its marvellous setting, that the idea of administering an
anaesthetic to carry out a surgical operation must be credited, so far
as priority goes, to the Chinese, since the book in which the above
account is given cannot have been composed later than the twelfth
century A.D.



CHAPTER VII--PHILOSOPHY AND SPORT

Chinese philosophy covers altogether too large a field to be dealt with,
even in outline, on a scale suitable to this volume; only a few of its
chief features can possibly be exhibited in the space at disposal.

Beginning with moral philosophy, we are confronted at once with what was
in early days an extremely vexed question; not perhaps entirely set
at rest even now, but allowed to remain in suspense amid the universal
acceptance of Confucian teachings. Confucius himself taught in no
indistinct terms that man is born good, and that he becomes evil only by
contact with evil surroundings. He does not enlarge upon this dogma,
but states it baldly as a natural law, little anticipating that within
a couple of centuries it was to be called seriously in question. It
remained for his great follower, Mencius, born a hundred years later, to