Democratic Sentinel, Volume 13, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 19 April 1889 — Like to Be Humbugged. [ARTICLE]

Like to Be Humbugged.

The Chinese themselves do not believe in dissection and there is no bodysnatching here. They believe that the heart is the seat of thought, that the soul exists in the liver, and that the gall bladder is the seat of courage. For this reason the gall bladders of tigers are eaten by soldiers to inspire them with courage. The Chinese doctor ranks no higher than the ordinary skilled workman. He gets from 15 to 20 cents a visit, and he often takes patients on condition that he will cure them within a certain time or no pay. He never sees his female patients except behind a screen, and he does not pay a second visit unless invited. His pay is called “golden thanks,” and the orthodox way of sending it to him is wrapped in red paper. The dentists look upon pulled teeth as trophies, and they go about with necklaces of decayed teeth about their necks or with them strung upon strings or tied to sticks. Toothache is supposed to come from a worm in the tooth, and there are a set of female doctors who make a business of extracting these worms. When the nerve is exposed they take this out and call it the worm, and when not they use a slight-of-hand by which they make their patients believe certain worms, which they show them, came from their teeth. I have heard persons tell of Chinamen who claimed to have had ten worms taken from their mouths in a single day, and I saw a woman actually ac work upon a patient iu the street here. China is as full of superstition as the West India islands, and the people like to be humbugged quite as well here as we do in America. —Frank G. Carpenter's letter from Shanghai. Judicial astrology was cultivated by the Chaldeans and transmitted to the Egyptians, Greeks, and Homans. It was much in vogue in France in the time of Catherine di Medicis, who was married to Francis I. of France in 1533. The first printing press in America was set up at Cambridge by Stephen Day, in 1639.