Each of these receipts being applied to particular cases, and the
ingredients that compose them being weighed with the most scrupulous
accuracy.
Medicine was taught in the imperial colleges of Pekin; but in every
district, a physician, who had studied six years, is appointed to instruct
the candidate for the profession, who was afterwards allowed to practise,
without any further studies or examination; and it is said, that, in
general, the physician only receives his fee when the patient is cured.
This assertion, however, is very doubtful, as the country abounds in
quacks, who, under such restrictions as to remuneration, would scarcely
earn a livelihood. Another singular, but economical practice prevails
amongst them--a physician never pays a second visit to a patient unless he
is sent for. Whatever may be the merits of Chinese practitioners both in
medicine and surgery, or their mode of receiving remuneration, it appears
that they are as much subject to animadversion as in other countries:--a
missionary having observed to a Chinese, that their medical men had
constantly recourse to fire in the shape of moxa, redhot iron, and burning
needles; he replied, "Alas! you Europeans are carved with steel, while we
are martyrized with hot iron; and I fear that in neither country will the
fashion subside, since the operators do not feel the anguish they inflict,
and are equally paid to torment us or to cure us!"