- An early illustration of the octagonal scarificator
An early illustration of the octagonal scarificator, 1801. This plate also includes one of the earliest illustrations of the syringe applied to cupping cups. (From Benjamin Bell, A System of Surgery, 7th edition, volume 3, Edinburgh, 1801.) - Advertisement for phlebotomy and cupping instruments
Advertisement for phlebotomy and cupping instruments. Note the rubber cups. (From George Tiemann & Co., American Armamentarium Chirurgicum, New York, 1889.) - A man employing leeches to reduce his weight
A man employing leeches to reduce his weight, 16th century. (From P. Boaistuau, Histoire Podigieuses, Paris, 1567. ) - Woman using leeches
Woman using leeches, 17th century. (From Guillaume van den Bossche, Historica Medica, Brussels, 1639.) - Wolves hunting a deer
Wolves hunting a deer - Wolf
Wolf - Syrian wolf
Syrian wolf - Side striped jackel
Side striped jackel - Wolves
Wolves - Wolf
Wolf - Wolf Head
Wolf Head - Wolf Head
Wolf Head - Santir
Santir A kind of dulcimer. Wood inlaid with mother-of-pearl. It contains twenty-five sets of wire strings, each set consisting of four strings which are tuned in unison. - Rebab Esh-Sha'er
Rebab Esh-Sha'er The body consists of a wooden frame, over which a parchment is stretched. One string of white horse-hair. The case is in the shape of a fork, and is intended to rest on the ground. - Kobsa
Kobsa A kind of Lute, Wood, painted. Ten strings, of which nine are ctgut, and one of silk covered with thin wire. A species of kobsa with eight strings is an old popular instrument of the Russians. - Handel's Harpsichord
Handel's Harpsichord. Case of deal, black japanned; with internal ornaments of flowers painted, and inscriptions in gold. Made by Andrea Ruckers, of Antwerp, 1651 - Chitarrone
Chitarrone A therbo. Wood, inlaid with ebony, ivory, and coloured woods. Two sets of wooden tuning-pegs, the lower containing twelve, and the higher eight. The instrument had wire strings. - Cheng
Cheng Containing 17 pipes of small bamboo reeds, arranged in five sets, each having pipes of equal length. - Biva
Biva A kind of lute. The body is of wood, lacquered black, and ornamented with a band of Japanese design in gold lacquer. Four strings and two very small soundholes. - Virginal
Virginal The instruments has mtal strings, one for each tone, whiched are twanged by means of small portions of quill, attached to slips of wood called "jacks" and provided with thin metal springs. German. About 1600 - Viola di Bardone
Viola di Bardone The finger-board is carved in open fret-work terminating in three lions' heads; above the bridge are two figures of negrose, carved and gilt. German 1686 - Taki-goto
Taki-Goto Bamboo, with 13 strings of silk neatly twisted. The body ornamented with embroidered work, and painted with inscriptions, flowers and foliage ; in the center is carved an open fan. - Archlute
Archlute Wood, inlaid with ivory and tortoise-shell, engraved. Two sets of tuning pegs, the lower containing fourteen, and the higher, ten. On the middle of the neck is an ovl plate of mother-of-pearl, bering the German inscription, Gott der Herr ist Sonne und Schield ("God, the Lord, is sun and shield.") About 1700 - Ashanti Ivory Trumpet
Negro Trumpet. Ivory. From the regions of the White Nile The large ivory trumpet is used by the Niam-Niams, and other negro tribes, for transmitting signals in times of war. - Nanja
Nanja Negro harp of the NiamNiams a tribe in the vicinity of the Bahr-el-Abiad. The body is of hollowed wood covered with skin, and the wooden neck terminates in a carved head with two horns. - Nubian Kissar
Nubian Kissar Kissar Round body of wood and skin, Five strings Length 1 foot 9 1/2 inches. - Tabl Shamee
Tabl Shamee Small kettle drum The name tabl shamee, signifying 'Syrian drum', indicates that this kind of drum was probably introduced into Egypt from Western Asia. It is usually made from tinned copper, with a parchment face. The Egyptians use the Tabl shamee especially in bridal processions, and on similar festive occasions. The performer carries it suspended from his neck and beats it with two slender sticks. - Rebab
The Rebab, an Arab instrument of the violin class, is especially used for accompanying the voice. - Italian Spinet
Ornamented with precious stones Made by Annibale Dei Rossi, of Milan in the year 1577 - Saw-whet owl
Saw-whet owl, by Bob Hines of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Washington, D.C. - Frick portable steam engine of 1877
Portable Steam Engine, 1877. Portable steam engines provided belting power on farms to run threshing machines, circular saws, etc. This Frick model steam engine operated regularly from 1877 to 1949. - An Indian Pipe
An Indian Pipe - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
Samuel Taylor Coleridge - Mirabeau
Mirabeau, the brilliant but unprincipled orator - Mans Head
Mans Head - Pestalozzi
The enthusiastic philanthropist and educational reformer, Pestalozzi - Roman General
Roman General - A lady and her son
The print is the representation of a Chinese Lady, and her Son. - A juggler
Preforming tricks with Jars This engraving exhibits a posture-master balancing two large China vases, and throwing himself into most extraordinary attitudes. - Female peasant
Blue or brown cotton frocks with green or yellow trowsers are the ordinary dresses of the female peasantry, all of whom, except such as labour in the field or the fisheries, have the vanity to cramp their feet, in imitation of their superiors. Those in the print are employed in winding cotton yarn. They are, in general, ill featured, and their countenance void of expression. - A Female Comedian
It is, perhaps, more proper to call the annexed figure, the representation of a person in the character of a female comedian, than “a female comedian,” as women have been prohibited from appearing publicly on the stage since the late Emperor, Kien Lung, took an actress for one of his inferior wives. Female characters are now therefore performed either by boys or eunuchs. The whole dress is supposed to be that of the ancient Chinese, and indeed is not very different from that of the present day. The young ladies of China display considerable taste and fancy in their head-dresses which are much decorated with feathers, flowers, and beads as well as metallic ornaments in great variety of form. Their outer garments are richly embroidered, and are generally the work of their own hands, a great part of their time being employed in this way. If it was not a rigid custom of the country, to confine to their apartments the better class of females, the unnatural cramping of their feet, while infants, is quite sufficient to prevent them from stirring much abroad, as it is with some difficulty they are able to hobble along; yet such is the force of fashion, that a lady with her feet of the natural size would be despised, and at once classed among the vulgar. - A Common sedan chair
This is one of the most common of sedan chairs, used by the peasantry; though there are others still meaner, and without any covering over head. The wages of labour are so low, and the price of provisions so cheap, that any man above a common labourer can afford to be carried in his chair. - A Chinese Mendicant
Begging is by no means a profitable trade in China, and few therefore pursue it except the monks of Fo and Tao-tzé, and a few impostors who go about pretending to foretell events and predict good or ill fortune. The annexed is the representation of a beggar of a different description. The piece of hollow wood in his hand is struck to draw attention, and the label on his back describes his condition, which is not exactly such as in other countries would excite much compassion. It states his unfortunate situation, as having no children to take care of him, to console him in affliction, to give him food when hungry, or medicine when sick. The want of children is considered in China as the greatest of all misfortunes, and is in reality so, as by the moral precepts of that nation, which have all the force of law, filial piety is looked upon as the first of moral virtues; and, however poor a child may be, he is bound to share his earnings with his aged parents. - A Chinese lady of Rank
If we except the unnatural custom of maiming the feet, which swells and distorts the ankles, and wrapping the latter up in bandages, the dress of Chinese ladies in the upper ranks of life is by no means unbecoming. In the head dress, in particular, they sometimes exhibit great taste, and great variety; and the materials of which their garments are made, and especially those parts of them which consist of their own embroidering, are exceedingly beautiful. Confined by education in their mental acquirements, a great part of their time is employed in works of this kind, in looking after and cultivating plants growing in pots which decorate their apartments and inner courtyards, and in attending to birds, which are either kept for singing, or some particular beauty of form or plumage. The buildings in the back ground form part of a view of Pekin, near one of the western gates. - A Chinese Carriage
This machine, like a baker’s cart, is the kind of wheel carriage which is most common in the country, and such as even the high officers of state ride in, when performing land journies in bad weather, and the driver invariably sits on the shaft in the aukward manner here represented. They have no springs, nor any seat in the inside, the persons using them always sitting cross-legged on a cushion at the bottom. In these carts the gentlemen of Lord Macartney’s embassy who had not horses, were accommodated, over a stone pavement full of rutts and holes. When ladies use them, a bamboo screen is let down in front to prevent their being stared at by passengers, and on each side, the light is admitted through a square hole just large enough for a person’s head. - A Chinese Bookseller
In so arbitrary a government as that of China, it would scarcely be supposed that the press should be free; that is to say, that every one who chooses it may follow the profession of a printer or a bookseller without any previous licence, or without submitting the works he may print or expose for sale to any censor appointed by government; but then he must take his chance to suffer in his person all the consequences that may result from the impression that may be made on the minds of the civil officers as to the tendency of the work. A libel against the government, an immoral or indecent book, would subject both printer and publisher to certain punishment both in his person and purse. - A Bonze
The priests of Fo in China are the same as the priests of Boudh are in India, from whence their religion passed into China in the first century of the Christian æra. The temples and the monasteries of China swarm with them; and they practice, ostensibly at least, all the austerities and mortifications of the several orders of monks in Europe, and inflict on themselves the same painful, laborious, and disgusting punishments which the faquirs of India undergo, either for the love of God, as they would have it supposed, or to impose on the multitude, as is most probably the real motive. In China, however, they are generally esteemed as men of correct morals: and there is reason to believe, that the calumnies heaped upon them by the Catholic missionaries are for the most part unfounded, and were occasioned by the mortification they experienced in finding their ceremonies, their altars, their images, their dress, to resemble so very nearly their own - A Boat Girl
On all the rivers and canals of China a vast number of families live entirely in their boats, and the women are generally quite as efficient navigators as the men, particularly in rowing and steering. Their dress differs very little from that of the men, except about the head, on which the hair is suffered to grow freely, and is sometimes plaited behind like that of the men, as in this figure, but more frequently tied up in a knot upon the crown of the head. Among persons of this description the feet are allowed to grow to their full size, and they are almost invariably without shoes or other cover. They smoke tobacco and chew the betel and areca nut with as much avidity as the men. - Woman Selling Chow-chow
There is little more to be observed of the present engraving than this: that whatever wares, goods, or merchandize are exposed to sale in the open air, which in the open plains, as well in the broad streets of cities, is very much the case, the vender and the articles themselves are, during the summer months, protected from the rays of the sun by a large umbrella, which is generally square, like that in the print. Some hundreds of similar stands and umbrellas were displayed on a plain near the spot where the embassy disembarked, within the mouth of the Pei-ho; the little booths, if they may be so termed, being generally well stored with sweet-meats and sliced water-melons laid upon ice. The poorest peasant in China carries an umbrella, either to defend him against the rays of the sun, or heavy rains. - Visit to the grave of a Relation
Filial piety in China extends beyond the grave. Every year at certain periods dutiful children assemble at the tomb of their parents or ancestors, to make oblations of flowers, or fruit, or pieces of gilt paper, or whatever else they consider as likely to be acceptable to the manes of the departed. Their mourning dress consists of a garment of Nanquin cotton, or canvas, of the coarsest kind. Some of the monuments erected over the dead are by no means inelegant; like their bridges and triumphal arches, they are very much varied, and made apparently without any fixed design or proportion. The semicircular or the horse-shoe form, like that in the print before which the mourner is kneeling, appeared to be the most common. - View on the Great Canal
The grand canal of China, or rather the water communication between the northern and southern extremities of the empire by a succession of canals and rivers, is certainly the first inland navigation in the world. The multitude of vessels, of every size and shape, is not to be estimated. The large one in the print is one of those which carried the British embassador and his suite up the Pei-ho to the neighbourhood of Pekin, which were in every respect comfortable and commodious. On passing bridges, which are very frequent in the neighbourhood of all towns and villages, the masts are usually lowered down; but many of the bridges are lofty enough to admit the smaller kind of barges to pass underneath with their masts standing. The bridges are almost as various in their shape and construction as the barges, and some of them by no means destitute of taste. - Trackers Regaling
THe figure represents a groupe of the common peasantry of the country eating their rice. The particular employment of these, here designated, is that of tracking barges on the canals; the pieces of wood lying by them being those which they place across the chest to drag forward the vessels. It will be seen from the other prints, that the common mode of carrying burthens is that of swinging baskets from the two extremities of a bamboo, which is laid by the middle across the shoulders. - The Fishing Cormorants
The Leu-tzé, or fishing cormorant of China, is the pelicanus sinensis, and resembles very much the common cormorant of England, which, we are told by naturalists, was once trained up to catch fish, pretty much in the same manner as those of China are. They are exceedingly expert in taking fish, and pursue them under water with great eagerness. They are taken out, on the rivers and lakes, in boats or bamboo rafts; and though sent on the chace after long fasting, they are so well trained that they rarely swallow any of the fish they take until they are permitted to do so by their masters. Many thousand families in China earn their subsistence by means of these birds. - Punishment of the Tcha, or Cangue
The punishment of the cangue may be compared to that of our pillory, with this difference, that in China a person convicted of petty crimes or misdemeanours is sometimes sentenced to carry the wooden clog about his neck for weeks, or even months; sometimes one hand, or even both hands, are inserted through holes, as well as the neck. The annexed representation is not a common one, and far less painful than the plain heavy tablet of wood, the whole weight of which must be supported on the shoulders; whereas in this it is mere confinement, without the person being compelled to carry a heavy load. The nature of the offence is always described in large characters, either on the edge of the cangue, or, as in the present instance, on a piece of board attached to it. - Punishment for Insolence to a superior
Piercing the ear with various sharp instruments is among the punishments of the Chinese. A man who had been insolent to one of the suite of Lord Macartney’s embassy, was sentenced to receive fifty strokes from the pant-zee or bamboo, in addition to having his hand pinned to his ear by an iron wire, which was said to have been inflicted immediately after the bastinade. The middle figure is an inferior officer of the police, who holds a painted board on which the crime is exhibited to spectators; the other personage is a mandarin reproving the culprit. - Kien Lung
Kien Lung was the fourth Emperor of the Tartar dynasty, which now possesses the throne of China. When the sketch was taken he was eighty-three years of age, but had all the appearance of a hale, vigorous man of sixty. Indeed his whole life had been spent in the active discharge of public business, and in the violent exercise of hunting and shooting in the wild regions of Tartary, which he continued with unabated zeal almost to the period of life above mentioned. He always commenced public business at two or three in the morning, and gave audience to foreign ambassadors at that early hour, whether in winter or summer, and he generally retired to rest at sunset; and to this invariable habit of rising and retiring at an early hour, he attributed much of his healthy and vigorous constitution. - Chinese Barbers Champooing
Throughout all the East, in India as well as in China, the luxury of champooing is enjoyed by all ranks of men; it consists of pulling the joints until they crack, and of thumping the muscles until they are sore; it is generally an operation performed by the barbers, who at the same time cleanse the ears, tickle the nose, and play a thousand tricks to please and amuse their customers, to whom and the surrounding audience they tell their gossiping stories. Of their merit in this respect we have abundant information in the Arabian Nights Entertainments. - Children eating their meal
Among the peasantry and labouring people of China, all are cooks. A little earthen-ware stove and an iron pan is all that is required. Rice is their principal food, which is simply boiled, and then a little fat of pork or a salt fish put into the pan to mix with it and give it a relish; they drink little else besides water, which is usually carried about in a gourd slung on the back; and they require no table nor chairs. Each person has his bowl and his chop-sticks, and squatting down on his haunches before the pan, he makes a hearty and contented meal. It is quite gratifying to see a party of youngsters making their dinner in this way in the open air. - Children collecting manure
The collecting and preparing of manure of various descriptions, and making it up into cakes for sale, occupy a very considerable population of the lowest class of society, and for the most part is the employment of the aged and children. No agriculturists, perhaps, understand the value of manure better than the Chinese, and certainly none are so well skilled in the economical distribution of it. It is quite ridiculous to see the avidity with which young children follow a traveller on horseback for the chance of catching what the animal may emit, which is immediately caught up, and thrown into the basket; and if the traveller himself should contribute his portion, it is considered as more valuable than that from the animal. - An officer of the Corps of Bowmen
The original weapon of the Chinese, which by the way seems to be the offensive arms of most savages, is the bow. It is still preferred by them to the matchlock; and the Tartars are so fond of it, that it forms an essential part of the education of the young princes of the blood. Their bows are large, and require a considerable degree of strength, as well as a peculiar knack to string them. Even the Emperor wears a ring of agate on the right thumb for the string to press against in drawing the bow, which is the weapon he uses every summer in hunting tigers and other wild beasts in the forests of Tartary.