WHEN LI HUNG CHANG HAD INFLUENZA.

New Zealand Times, Volume LVIX, Issue 2998, 9 December 1896, Page 4

WHEN LI HUNG CHANG HAD INFLUENZA.

.Towards the end of 1831 Li filing Chang was tdken with influenza, which had by that time bedouie well established in China. The Chinese are known to b«J swathed in superstitious of tho grossest kind, the accumulation of some thousands of years of uninterrupted legend. Their oast of mind is not so much unscientific as anti-sotcntitiC) inasmuch they rarely seek natural explanations of the most ordinary phenomena, but supernatural. With all their stores of book-learning, they have not been able to throw off the most primitive form of fetishism. If an btitet-prisb is to succeed) tile fortune teller must bb conciliated; a lucky day choaeli lO teolnmencb it; and proper cbfeniouitu pbsbHied. it has bfeeii no uiiimpdrtylttf part of Li Hung. Chang’s scheme of innovation to adopt for himself and his family foreign medicine, to found a medical school under competent foreign teachers. For many years, ond up to the day of her death, the Viceroy’s wife, a most liberal, wise, and practical. woman, had a lady doctor to attend her and her daughters, between whom a genuine attachment grew up. The Viceroy himself has been attended for many years by tho gentleman who is with him now. Dr Andrew Irwin j +he toost strenuous and extradiplomatic efforts have been made by the French and Russian Ministers to prevent Dr Irwin from Li Hung Chang to Europe. These active diplomatists went so far as to warn the Viceroy that ftn English doctor wmild not bs received either in France or Russia. * The serious illness of Li Hung Ohang in 1891 was a severe tost not only of his own faith in Western medicine, but of his power of resistance to tho Chinese traditional practice, which pressed heavily on him. For only the Viceroy and his wife were converted, the rest ’of the family remaining devoted to the native folklore! and under the Vice-regal roof Were two veritable champions of reaction, his eldest true son and his son In law. The latter, as Imperial Commissioner, distinguished himself at the French attack on Fooohbw, in 1881, by combined bluster and cowardice. But ho showed no cowardice in his attacks on the sickbed of his father-in-law. Tho two reactionaries took it in turn to weary the old man with their epoatulations against foreign medicine, and having won over his daughter, the wife of Chang-Pei Lun, she knelt at the siok-bed and implored her father to dismiss the foreign doctor. Then tho oracle was consulted, and tho response obtained, “Change the treatment j" whereupon the efforts of the reactionaries were redoubled. Weak as ho Was, however, the patient held firm, being greatly supported by the pluck of a younger son, Li Clung Mai. ’lbis lad was at the time enjoying the advantage of a foreign education, and was consequently better able to appreciate the Western science Of medicine than the rest of the family. : Ha therefore charged, hitosolt with the duty of seeing ilia doctor’s directions carried oqt. This was no easy task in a-Chinese house, where tho sick-room is managed much more iu the fashion of the two immortals, Sairey and Betsy, than according to ournioderu proscriptions. Neither physiological not pathological ’ processes being in the least degree reckoned With, the innumerable delicate . attentions needed to sUstaln (t flickering life,ate entirely absent. Instead Pt these, there Is tin oUtcry for ipdgitl (lillßl spiritual inbaritatipns; and (juaok tipstrilms of every 'description,'- some of them monstrous. All the while the patient is being talked to death by the family, who hold their councils at the bedside, where they discuss the issues of life aqd death aloud in the hearing of the helpless victim of their loquacity. In these noisy conclaves at tho bedside of Li Hung Chang tho loaders of the debate were in tho habit of smoking their acrid tobacco, attendants standing by to fill and hand them the long pipe. This alone was death to a man who could scarcely got his breath. The doctor peremptorily forbade the smoking, and was effectively ‘ backed by young Ching Mai, who would not allow his elders to fumigate the sick chamber. In the matter of-nourishment, too, which “the family" would have restricted to rice-water, the young follow was equally determined to see the 'doctor's prescriptions carried out, so far as he Was able. Another point was temperature. It Was midwinter, in a Canadian climate, and Chinese houses, oven the best of them, are not air-tight. The temperature of the room could only be kept up approximately to the normal by means of a stove. This was objected to as un Chinese by “ the family," but here, again, the young one fought tor the doctor and had his '/ho- winter solstice was approaching, which the Chinese reckon as falling on December 92, a day of direful omen for a sick man. For a superstition akin to our own about the ebbing dfthd tide haunts the Chinese in respect Co the winter solstice, which of all the days of the year is the most likely for an old man to die in, The family had-earnestly impressed cn Li Hung Ohang that he .would not survive that day. Even . "Lady Li,'who also lay sick, the sinister influences to herself, and thought that she would not survive the shortest day. When the! doctors arrived, the Viceroy simply asked Dr FraZor, whom he had known for many years, “Shall I die on the 22nd?” The emphatic “ No-o o 1" from the cheery blue-eyed tllsterman—albeit proceeding more from the heart than the headbrought a sparkle, to the sick man’s eye, and it seemed that from that moment recovery began j the patient took sonic nourishment,-- and strength returned quickly. Before many days \yoid over the Viceroy was attending to public business) for a Chinese official knows no rest out of the grave. ; So it was that Li weathered the winter solstice; —CornhiU Mdgazinc.