ammed earth and plaster, with beaten
floors on which dry grass was strewn as carpet. Originally accustomed
to sit on mats, they introduced chairs and tables at an early date; they
drank an ardent spirit with their carefully cooked food, and wore robes
of silk. Ballads were sung, and dances were performed, on ceremonial and
festive occasions; hunting and fishing and agriculture were occupations
for the men, while the women employed themselves in spinning and
weaving. There were casters of bronze vessels, and workers in gold,
silver, and iron; jade and other stones were cut and polished for
ornaments. The written language was already highly developed, being much
the same as we now find it. Indeed, the chief difference lies in the
form of the characters, just as an old English text differs in form from
a text of the present day. What we may call the syntax of the language
has remained very much the same; and phrases from the old ballads of
three thousand years ago, which have passed into the colloquial, are
still readily understood, though of course pronounced according to the
requirements of modern speech. We can no more say how Confucius (551-479
B.C.) pronounced Chinese, than we can say how Miltiades pronounced Greek
when addressing his soldiers before the battle of Marathon (490 B.C.).
The "books" which were read in ancient China consisted of thin slips
of wood or bamboo, on which the characters were written by means of a
pencil of wood or bamboo, slightly frayed at the end, so as to pick up
a coloured liquid and transfer it to the tablets as required. Until
recently, it was thought that the Chinese scratched their words on
tablets of bamboo with a knife, but now we know that the knife was only
used for scratching out, when a character was wrongly written.

The art of healing was practised among the Chinese in their pre-historic
times, but the earliest efforts of a methodical character, of which
we have any written record, belong to the period with which we are now
dealing. There is indeed a work, entitled "Plain Questions," which is
attributed to a legendary emperor of the Golden Age, who interrogates
one of his ministers on the cause and cure of all kinds of diseases;
as might be expected, it is not of any real value, nor can its date be
carried back beyond a few centuries B.C.

Physicians of the feudal age classified diseases under the four seasons
of the year: headaches and neuralgic affections under _spring_, skin