d excretions are very commonly used. One
useful method of practice reached a remarkable development, viz., the
art of acupuncture--the thrusting of fine needles more or less deeply
into the affected part. There are some 388 spots on the body in which
acupuncture could be performed, and so well had long experience taught
them as to the points of danger, that the course of the arteries may be
traced by the tracts that are avoided. The Chinese practiced inoculation
for smallpox as early as the eleventh century.

Even the briefest sketch of the condition of Chinese medicine leaves the
impression of the appalling stagnation and sterility that may afflict a
really intelligent people for thousands of years. It is doubtful if they
are today in a very much more advanced condition than were the Egyptians
at the time when the Ebers Papyrus was written. From one point of view
it is an interesting experiment, as illustrating the state in which
a people may remain who have no knowledge of anatomy, physiology or
pathology.

Early Japanese medicine has not much to distinguish it from the Chinese.
At first purely theurgic, the practice was later characterized by
acupuncture and a refined study of the pulse. It has an extensive
literature, largely based upon the Chinese, and extending as far back as
the beginning of the Christian era. European medicine was introduced by
the Portuguese and the Dutch, whose "factory" or "company" physicians
were not without influence upon practice. An extraordinary stimulus was
given to the belief in European medicine by a dissection made by
Mayeno in 1771 demonstrating the position of the organs as shown in
the European anatomical tables, and proving the Chinese figures to be
incorrect. The next day a translation into Japanese of the anatomical
work of Kulmus was begun, and from its appearance in 1773 may be dated
the commencement of reforms in medicine. In 1793, the work of de Gorter
on internal medicine was translated, and it is interesting to know that
before the so-called "opening of Japan" many European works on medicine
had been published. In 1857, a Dutch medical school was started in Yedo.
Since the political upheaval in 1868, Japan has made rapid progress in
scientific medicine, and its institutions and teachers are now among the
best known in the world.(28)

(28) See Y. Fujikawa, Geschichte der Medizin in Japan,
Tokyo, 1911.

CHAPTER II -- GREEK MEDICINE

OGRAIAE gentis dec