respond.
Fortunately nature has ways of healing diseases in spite of theories and
drugs. To this benign principle must be assigned the fact that the human
race has survived the surgery and medicaments of mediaeval Europe as well
as mediaeval China and Japan. In one particular the medical art of Japan
seems to have been differently, perhaps better, conducted than in Europe.
It is narrated by the Japanese annalists,(260) that if a physican made a
mistake in his prescription or in his directions for taking the medicine
he was punished by three years' imprisonment and a heavy fine; and if
there should be any impurity in the medicine prescribed or any mistake in
the preparation, sixty lashes were inflicted besides a heavy fine.

[Illustration]

Oban. Gold Coin, 1727.

Three peculiar modes of medical practice deserve notice. The first was
acupuncture, which consisted in inserting a thin needle through the skin
into the muscles beneath. A second was the cauterization by _moxa_(261)
(Japanese _mogusa_). This was effected by placing over the spot a small
conical wad of the fibrous blossoms of mugwort (_Artemisia vulgaris
latifolia_). The cone was kindled at the top and slowly burned till it was
consumed. A painful blister was produced on the spot, which was believed
to have a wholesome effect in the case of many complaints. A third mode of
treatment is the practice of _massage_ (_amma_), which western nations
have borrowed, and which in Japan it has long been the exclusive privilege
of the blind to apply.

[Illustration]

Cauterizing With Moxa.

Many of the improved notions of western medicine were introduced by the
Dutch, and this accounts for the unprecedentedly rapid advance which this
science has made since the opening of the country.

CHAPTER XIII. COMMODORE PERRY AND WHAT FOLLOWED.

The most potent cause which led to the breaking down of the Tokugawa
Shogunate, was the attitude which the empire had assumed toward foreign
nations. There were other causes which co-operated with this, but none
which were capable of such far-reaching and revolutionary effects. We have
seen that this attitude was due to the fears entertained concerning the
designs of the Portuguese and the Spanish. These fears may have been
unfounded, but they were none the less real and operative. Such fears may
have been stimul