that is quite as much as can be said, for we may pronounce it a fact
that they never take either his advice or his medicine. They still
prefer to appear with large dabs of green plaster stuck on either
temple, and to drink loathsome concoctions of marvellous drugs,
compounded according to eternal principles laid down many centuries
ago. In serious cases, when they employ their own doctors, they are
apt to mark, as Bacon said, the hits but not the misses; and failure
of human skill is generally regarded as resulting from the
interposition of divine will. Directly, however, a foreigner comes
upon the scene they forget at once that medicine is an uncertain
science, and expect not only a sure but an almost instantaneous
recovery; and, unfortunately, a single failure is quite enough to undo
the good of many months of successful practice. One Chinaman bitterly
complained to us of a foreign doctor, and sweepingly denounced the
whole system of western treatment, because the practitioner alluded to
had failed to cure his mother, aged eighty, of a very severe paralytic
stroke. A certain percentage of natives are annually benefited by
advice and medicine, both of which are provided gratis, and go home to
tell the news and exhibit themselves as living proofs of the _foreign
devils'_ skill; but in many instances their friends either believe
that magical arts have been brought to bear, or that after all a
Chinese doctor would have treated the case with equal success, and
accordingly the number of patients increases in a ratio very
disproportionate to the amount of good really effected. Besides, if
faith in European doctors was truly spreading to any great extent, we
should hear of wealthy Chinamen regularly calling them in and
contributing towards the income of those now in full practice at the
Treaty ports. It is absurd to point to isolated cases in a nation of
several hundred millions, and argue that progress is being made
because General This or Prefect That consented to have an abscess