The Emperor _Fuh-Hi_, who invented the eight diagrams, was the first physician whose name has come down to modern times. He is one of the _Sang Huông_, or “Three Emperors,” and is the deity of doctors.
_I Kuang Tāi Uông_ is the god of surgery. The people say he was a foreigner, of the Loochoo Islands, who came to the middle kingdom and practised surgery. As he was deaf whilst in the flesh, his worshippers consider he is thus afflicted now that he is a deity, so they pray into his ear, as well as offer him incense and candles.[295]
_Ling Chui Nä_ is the goddess of midwifery and children. If children are sick, their parents employ Tauist priests in some of her temples to perform a ceremony for their cure.[296]
_Iöh Uong Chû Sü_ is the god of medicine. It is said that he was a distinguished physician who was deified after his death. He is now generally worshipped by dealers in drugs and by their assistants. On the third day of the third month, they make a feast in his honour, and burn candles and incense before his image at his temple. Practising physicians do not usually take any part in these proceedings.[297]
The Chinese have goddesses of small-pox and measles, which are extremely popular divinities. Should it thunder after the pustules of small-pox have appeared, a drum is beaten, to prevent them breaking. On the fourteenth day ceremonies are performed before the goddess, to induce her to cause the pustules to dry up.[298]
Mediums are often employed to prescribe for the sick. They behave precisely as our spiritualists do, and pretend that the divinity invoked casts himself into the medium for the time being, and dictates the medicine which the sick person requires.[299]
In the “Texts of Táoism”[300] we are informed that “In the body there are seven precious organs, which serve to enrich the state, to give rest to the people, and to make the vital force of the system full to overflowing. Hence we have the heart, the kidneys, the breath, the blood, the brains, the semen, and the marrow. These are the seven precious organs. They are not dispersed when the body returns (to the dust). Refined by the use of the Great Medicine, the myriad spirits all ascend among the Immortals.”