diseases of all kinds under _summer_, fevers and agues under _autumn_,
and bronchial and pulmonary complaints under _winter_. They treated the
various complaints that fell under these headings by suitable doses of
one or more ingredients taken from the five classes of drugs, derived
from herbs, trees, living creatures, minerals, and grains, 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