CHAPTER IX.
MAINLY ABOUT CHINESE DOCTORS.
Chaotong is an important centre for the distribution of medicines to Szechuen and other parts of the empire.

An extraordinary variety of drugs and medicaments is collected in the city.

No pharmacopoeia is more comprehensive than the Chinese.

No English physician can surpass the Chinese in the easy confidence with which he will diagnose symptoms that he does not understand.

The Chinese physician who witnesses the unfortunate effect of placing a drug of which he knows nothing into a body of which he knows less, is no more disconcerted than is his Western brother under similar circumstances; he retires, sententiously observing "there is medicine for sickness but none for fate." "Medicine," says the Chinese proverb, "cures the man who is fated not to die." "When Yenwang (the King of Hell) has decreed a man to die at the third watch, no power will detain him till the fifth." The professional knowledge of a Chinese doctor largely consists in ability to feel the pulse, or rather the innumerable pulses of his Chinese patient.