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MY DEAR FATHER,- The worst feature of the summer here is undoubtedly the hot, stifling Mghts. We have so far bad three memorable ones during which not a breath of air seemed availaNe. If you lie down and try to sleep the perspiration runs into your mouth and chokes you; There is a story here of a man who on account of this inconvenience slept in the bath, but the poor chap forgot to pull the plug out of the waste pipe, and he was drowned in his own perspira- tion at 3.30 next morning. The last hot night we had, I drank one bottle of Eno's and three of barley water. At 5.30 a.m. I had to go up to St. George's for a drink. It is unwise to keep either intoxicating liquors or mineral waters in the house during the hot weather. If one does so, during the nights when sleep is impossible, one cannot avoid becoming either "toxed " or painfully distended with carbonic acid gas. A hot night is the very devil in Shanghai. Sleeping under an electric fan is apt to give one eatarrh of the bowels. Not sleeping under an electric fan means not sleeping at all. If one lives in a quiet district the groans of the fat ladies and the blood-curdling imprecations of the adipose men who live within a hundred yards of one are so distressing that any hopes of sleep must be finally abandoned. In your question about the doctors you do not say whether you mean native or foreign; if foreign, I really don't know anything about them, except that they are owed more money than would enable the majority of them to go home and live without doing any one further injury for the remainder of their lives. No one can owe the grocer money, but a doctor, of course, doesn't matter, he is "so good, don't you know." The worthy Dr. Lalcacca, whose murder you will have heard about, was an example of this kind of medico. He did more good in a quiet way than many a philanthropist, and I admire his charity more than Carnegie's, because no one heard about it, It was simply that the bill didn't come in, that's all. The Chinese doctor, however, is a thing of pure joy, provided, of course, one doesn't have anything to do with him professionally. His prescriptions range from dried spiders to pow- dered deer-horns. He requires no degree, but builds tip a reputation by spreading the fame of his cures amongst imaginative people; upon somewhat similar lines to those adopted by the proprietors of our own patent medicines, but without their facilities for advertisement and wholesale deception. Each doctor has a certain number of cures that have been kept a secret, and handed down from father to son. Many women "practise" medicine, and I have known some of them who, as a result of their high repu- tation, can and do charge as much as 700 taels- about £87-for taking a case in hand. The Chinese doctor is an adept at that branch of surgery and homeopathy which falls under the head of counter-irritation. For pains in the leg such as accompany gout, rheumatism, &c., be thrusts needles about five inches long into the flesh (acupuncture). The effect is magicat for the gouty or rheumatic pains cannot be felt for some time after the needles are withdrawn. In obstinate cases these needles are left imbedded in the flesh, cotton is tied to the protruding ends, soaked in fat and Iigbted. The needles thus become nearly red- hot, in which state they are accounted as more effective. For throat troubles he rubs dirty brass coins on the skin of the neck until inflammation is set up. It is highly probable that after this treat ment the patient doesn't know whether he has sore throat or not, and his skin is giving him such a devil of a time that he doesn't care. One of the native doctor's most reliaNe cures foi derangement of the stomach (a serious corn plaint when one realizes that the Chinaman regards the stomach as the thinking apparatus) is live earthworms sw~lowed with honey. A " dose" of medicine frequently consists of a quart of liquid, and a pill weighing two ounces is not uncommon, whereas a "treatment" may comprise twenty-five packages of various dried vermin, entrails, claws and what not ranging from the genital organs of a cat to powdered tigers' bones. In the case of many of these concoctions a propitious day must be selected for their preparation. The idea that the virtues of an animal or even a human being are transmitted to the eater of its or his flesh still prevails. For this reason tigers' blood promotes couyage, and soldiers have been known to eat the heart of a decapitated robber chief in order to absorb the fearlessnesa _ of the deceased. The blood of executed criminals is also highly prized for its virtue as a cure for con- gumption, though I have been unable to assign any reason-even Chinese reason-for this conclusion. In justice to the best class of Chinese doctor, however, they have some herb medicines of such wonderful value ~d efficacy in bowel com- plaints that they are worthy of careful in- vestigation and study by the faculty. The Chinese make good patients. I myself have seen a Chinaman, working on a building, stop a full hod of bricks falling from a height of fifty feet with his head. He immediately plugged the nasty wound with a double handful of mortar and continued working. He was on piece-work. No thought of the Workmen's Compensation Act troubld him, but the Chinese foreman prob- ably docked him a few cash for the mortar. I once saw a Chinaman, walking across the road with his mouth agape and his thoughts far away, suddenl have his interest in his immediate surroundings aroused by an electric tram travel- ling at the rate of eight miles an hour bitting him in the only part of the anatomy over- worked by those who live a sedentary life. The impact sent him about twenty yards in a succession of variegated somersaults. Immedi- ately he stopped he scrambled to his feet, glanced fearfully over his shoulder, and made off at top speed as if pursued by Satan himself. He probably thought he would be prosecuted for obstruction. It is amongst these people that the Chinese doctor "practises." The most interesting happening this week is. the final closing of the Aihambra, which is a gilded palace of gambling, and the resort of ladies whose claim to virtue has been allowed to lapse. This establishment is situate some way out of the International Settlement, and has been run for many years under Spanish protection. This protection was obtained by the proprietor as a subject of the Argentine Republic, the affairs of which turbulent State were in charge of the Spanish Consul of that day. As a result of this case, one can only con- dude that the Council and police are quite capable of looking after the town, for they cer- tainly unravelled a tangled skein of legal process in this instance. We are to-day awaiting with interest the final act in a play that could never have been set in any other part of the world; for the International Settlement, from the point of view of legal procedure, possesses complications that could only be equalled by an extravagant comic opera. The Aihambra would make an excellent Lunatic Asylum, under municipal control. The town is badly in need of one, and the old associa- tions of the place make the suggestion peculiarly appropriate.
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