cant in itself, is yet of importance to the
poor Kuges, whose penniless condition forms a great contrast to the
wealth of their inferiors in rank, the Daimios. I believe that this is
the only case in which rank can be bought or sold in Japan. In China, on
the contrary, in spite of what has been written by Meadows and other
admirers of the examination system, a man can be what he pleases by
paying for it; and the coveted button, which is nominally the reward of
learning and ability, is more often the prize of wealthy ignorance.

The saints who are alluded to above are the saints of the whole country,
as distinct from those who for special deeds are locally worshipped.

Touching the remedy of the fox's liver, prescribed in the tale, I may
add that there would be nothing strange in this to a person acquainted
with the Chinese pharmacopoeia, which the Japanese long exclusively
followed, although they are now successfully studying the art of healing
as practised in the West. When I was at Peking, I saw a Chinese
physician prescribe a decoction of three scorpions for a child struck
down with fever; and on another occasion a groom of mine, suffering from
dysentery, was treated with acupuncture of the tongue. The art of
medicine would appear to be at the present time in China much in the
state in which it existed in Europe in the sixteenth century, when the
excretions and secretions of all manner of animals, saurians, and
venomous snakes and insects, and even live bugs, were administered to
patients. "Some physicians," says Matthiolus, "use the ashes of
scorpions, burnt alive, for retention caused by either renal or vesical
calculi. But I have myself thoroughly experienced the utility of an oil
I make myself, whereof scorpions form a very large portion of the
ingredients. If only the region of the heart and all the pulses of the
body be anointed with it, it will free the patients from the effects of
all kinds of poisons taken by the mouth, corrosive ones excepted."
Decoctions of Egyptian mummies were much commended, and often prescribed
with due academical solemnity; and the bones of the human skull,
pulverized and administered with oil, were used as a specific in cases
of renal calculus. (See Petri Andreae Matthioli "Opera," 1574.)

These remarks were made to me by a medical gentleman to whom I mentioned
the Chinese doctor's prescription of scorpion tea, and they seem to me
so curious that I insert them for comparison's sake.