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""6 GENERAL REVIEW OF THE YEARWhile in these troublous times the education of womenmakes but little headway, the Chinese Government hasdefinitely adopted the principle. This adoption is unquestionably one of the greatest revolutions in the intellectualhistory of mankind.The Lecture habit is one of the most im-Lectures . .recent innovations. Fromportant 01 the manybeing unknown (and taboo where it was known) it is nowgenerally accepted as a matter of course. The Governmentincreasingly depends upon it for educating the people in itsnew departures in Agriculture, Forestry, or Eiver Conservation the last at present unhappily largely a mirage.Women speak in public as well as men, and, if they haveanything to say, can address a mixed audience.. . When the pneumonic plague prevailed inManchuria in 191], the hand of the ChineseGovernment w r as forced to adopt Western methods ofCivilizationdealing with it, lest in the potent name ofother powers should step in and assume the quarantineof China to save the rest of the world. The theoryand practice of occidental medicine may be said tohave been then potentially adopted, as it were en bloc.This does not of course mean that the Chinese system ofmedicine is given up. So far from it, it appears to be morefirmly entrenched than before. It is universally admittedthat in surgery foreigners are wizards, but W hen 7 it comesto internal complaints many say and many more feel that theyare not only no better than Chinese doctors, but are not so!good Chinese medical science, like the lunar calendar, is heldin a counterbalancing reserve; the latter constitutes the realalmanac of the Chinese people, the solar reckoning merelyserving for official use, and for the modernized fringes ofthe Empire and the treaty-ports. It would be rash to predict that such will not be the case five hundred years fromnow, for we see in Europe to-day how strong a hold the oldfaiths and the ancient myths have had and still have evenin the twentieth century, and in the midst of a \vorld war.Formal patronage was extended to western medicinewhen many years ago the late Grand Empress Dowagerpresented the sum of ten thousand taels of silver to the