about the medical practice of these yer Chinamen?"
"I don't know," said the doctor bluntly, "and I don't know ANYBODY who
does."
There was a sudden silence in the bar, and the doctor, putting down his
glass, continued with slight professional precision:--
"You see, the Chinese know nothing of anatomy from personal observation.
Autopsies and dissection are against their superstitions, which declare
the human body sacred, and are consequently never practiced."
There was a slight movement of inquiring interest among the party,
and Cy Parker, after a meaning glance at the others, went on half
aggressively, half apologetically:--
"In course, they ain't surgeons like you, Doc, but that don't keep them
from having their own little medicines, just as dogs eat grass, you
know. Now I want to put it to you, as a fa'r-minded man, if you mean ter
say that, jest because those old women who sarve out yarbs and spring
medicines in families don't know anything of anatomy, they ain't fit to
give us their simple and nat'ral medicines?"
"But the Chinese medicines are not simple or natural," said the doctor
coolly.
"Not simple?" echoed the party, closing round him.
"I don't mean to say," continued the doctor, glancing around at their
eager, excited faces with an appearance of wonder, "that they are
positively noxious, unless taken in large quantities, for they are not
drugs at all, but I certainly should not call them 'simple.' Do YOU know
what they principally are?"
"Well, no," said Parker cautiously, "perhaps not EXACTLY."
"Come a little closer, and I'll tell you."
Not only Parker's head but the others were bent over the counter. Dr.
Duchesne uttered a few words in a tone inaudible to the rest of the
company. There was a profound silence, broken at last by Abe Wynford's
voice:--
"Ye kin pour me out about three fingers o' whiskey, Barkeep. I'll take
it straight."
"Same to me," said the others.
The men gulped down their liquor; two of them quietly passed out. The
doctor wiped his lips, buttoned his coat, and began to draw on his
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