They are nearly all young, and are spoken of as "divining youths," and they use an exorcising magic based on the principle that legions of spectres prone to evil live in the machine of the world.

(De Groot, VI, 983-985.) The Chinese believe that it is the Tao, or "Order of the Universe," which affords immunity from evil, and according to whether or no the birth occurred in a beneficent year, dominated by four double cyclical characters, the horoscope is "heavy" or "light." Those with light horoscopes are specially prone to incurable complaints, but much harm can be averted if such an individual be surrounded with exorcising objects, if he be given proper amulets to wear and proper medicines to swallow, and by selecting for him auspicious days and hours.
Two or three special points may be referred to.

The doctrine of the pulse reached such extraordinary development that the whole practice of the art centred round its different characters.

There were scores of varieties, which in complication and detail put to confusion the complicated system of some of the old Graeco-Roman writers.

The basic idea seems to have been that each part and organ had its own proper pulse, and just as in a stringed instrument each chord has its own tone, so in the human body, if the pulses were in harmony, it meant health; if there was discord, it meant disease.