The charitable dispensation of medicines by the Chinese, is well
deserving notice. They have a stone which is ten cubits high, erected in
the public squares of their cities; whereon is engraved the name of all
sorts of medicines, with the price of each, and when the poor stand in
need of relief from physic, they go to the treasury to receive the price
each medicine is rated at.
The physicians of China have only to feel the arm of their patient in
three places, and to observe the rate of the pulse, to form an opinion
on the cause, nature, danger, and duration of the malady. Without the
patient speaking at all, they can tell infallibly what part is attacked
with disease, whether the brain, the heart, the liver, the lungs, the
intestines, the stomach, the flesh, the bones, and so on. As they are
both physicians and apothecaries, and prepare their own medicines, they
are paid only when they effect a cure. If the same rule were introduced
with us, I fear we should have fewer physicians.
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