each of which class contained medicines of five flavours, with special properties:  sour for nourishing the bones, acid for nourishing the muscles, salt for nourishing the blood-vessels, bitter for nourishing general vitality, and sweet for nourishing the flesh.  The pulse has always been very much to the front in the treatment of disease; there are at least twenty-four varieties of pulse with which every doctor is supposed to be familiar, and some eminent doctors have claimed to distinguish no fewer than seventy-two.  In the “Plain Questions” there is a sentence which points towards the circulation of the blood,—­“All the blood is under the jurisdiction of the heart,” a point beyond which the Chinese never seem to have pushed their investigations; but of this curious feature in their civilization, later on.

It was under the feudal system, perhaps a thousand years before Christ, that the people of China began to possess family names.  Previous to that time there appear to have been tribal or clan names; these however were not in ordinary use among the individual members of each clan, who were known by their personal names only, bestowed upon them in childhood by their parents.  Gradually, it became customary to prefix to the personal name a surname, adopted generally from the name of the place where the family lived, sometimes from an appellation or official title of a distinguished ancestor; places in China never take their names from individuals, as with us, and consequently there are no such names as Faringdon or Gislingham, the homes of the Fearings or Gislings of old.  Thus, to use English terms, a boy who had been called “Welcome” by his parents might prefix the name of the place, Cambridge, where he was born, and call himself Cambridge Welcome, the surname always coming first in Chinese, as, for instance, in Li Hung-Chang.  The Manchus, it must be remembered, have no surnames; that is to say, they do not use their clan or family names, but call themselves by their personal names only.

Chinese surnames, other than place names, are derived from a variety of sources:  from nature, as River, Stone, Cave; from animals, as Bear, Sheep, Dragon; from birds, as Swallow, Pheasant; from the body, as Long-ears, Squint-eye; from colours, as Black, White; from trees and flowers, as Hawthorn, Leaf, Reed, Forest; and others, such as Rich, East, Sharp, Hope, Duke, Stern, Tepid, Money, etc.  By the fifth century before Christ, the use of surnames had definitely become established for all classes, whereas in Europe surnames were not known until about the twelfth century after Christ, and even then were confined to persons of wealth and position.  There is a small Chinese book, studied by every schoolboy and entitled The Hundred Surnames, the word “hundred” being commonly used in a generally comprehensive sense.  It actually contains about four hundred of the names which occur most frequently.