Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 286

1850.

Report of the Ophthalmic Hospital.

253

10,412 works to be printed according to the plan of Kin Kien ; and an analytical and descriptive catalogue of them, extending over 120 octavo volumes, was published by imperial authority. There is a copy of this precious work in the Bibliothèque Royale at Paris, and in the 82d vol. p. 53, we have gathered the preceding details. In later times, the printing by movable types called pai 182', or compounded characters, has made sensible progress in China; and in the course of another generation, the Chinese will very probably altogether give up the use of engraved plates of wood. We have in Paris many large works published by this process; for example "A Treatise on the Military Art,” (W4- isian-keou-pien,) in 24 vols.; “A Tonic Dictionary of the names of Towns, (Li-tái Tí-lí Yun-pien), in 16 quarto vole.; "a Geographical Description of the Globe, by European, Chinese, and other Oriental authors," (Hai-kwok Tú Chi,) in 20 quarto vola., &c. These editions, it is true, are far from possessing the same elegance as those which have come from the Imperial presses; but they are very perfect, and far more correct than those which are produced by wooden plates, the Chinese authors and editors having adopted our custom of revising the proofs of the text until they appear altogether free from typographical errors.

NoTs.— The translator of the above paper, for the sake of illustration, has made a small set of movable clay types, and the impressions taken from them are such as to afford ample proof that with a good material and a little experience it would be very easy to prepare either types or matrices by this original Chinese method, at a much less cost than by the steel punches and cop- þer matrices now in use.

ART. V. Fifteenth Report of the Medical Missionary Society's Ophthalmic Hospital at Canton, for the years 1848 and 1849. By Rev. P. PARKER, M. D.

In reporting from year to year, the operations of this Institution, a primary object is to furnish the members of the Society and the friends of its cause, in a compendious form, the means of judging of its pros- perity and influence, at the same time giving prominence to such cases as are of special interest to the profession, and to others calculat- ed to illustrate the moral bearing of medical missionary operations.

The whole number of patients admitted up to 31st of Dec. 1849, was 34,598, of whom 3,663 were received in 1848, and 4,341 in 1849. The table of diseases at the close exhibits the variety that has been presented, from which a selection is given in detail.

It is perhaps too obvious to require remark that the labor and res- ponsibility involved in the care of so many, and such serious cases, have not been small; but it is a source of unfeigned gratitude that the continued Divine blessing has signally crowned these labors and responsibilities, and the confidence and gratitude of Chinese of all grades, as manifested in former years, has exhibited no abatement. The former Imperial Commissioner Kiying, since his return to Pe-