Dawn Blossoms Plucked at Dusk by Lu Xun

Author:Lu Xun [Xun, Lu]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: ①英语-汉语-对照读物②鲁迅散文-选集摇
ISBN: 9787544716697
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2011-03-01T05:00:00+00:00

You wear out iron shoes in hunting round,

When all the time it's easy to be found!

Now we had the adjuvant, but there was still a special pill: broken-drum bolus. Broken-drum boluses were made from the leather of worn-out drums. Since one name for “dropsy” is “drum-tight,” the leather from wornout drums can naturally cure it. Gangyi of the Qing Dynasty, who hated “foreign devils,” acted on the same principle when he prepared to fight them by training a corps of “tiger angels,” for the tigers would be able to eat the sheep, and the angels could subdue the devils. Unfortunately there was only one shop in the whole town which sold this miraculous drug, and that was nearly two miles from our house. However, this was not like the case of the ardisia which we groped in the dark to find. After making out his prescription Dr. Chen Lianhe gave me earnest and detailed instructions as to where to obtain it.

“I have one medicine,” Dr. Chen told my father once, “which applied to the tongue would do you good, I'm sure. For the tongue is the intelligent sprout of the heart.... It is not expensive either, only two dollars a box....”

My father thought for some time, then shook his head.

“This present treatment may not prove too effective,” said Dr. Chen another day. “I think we might ask a diviner if there is not some avenging spirit behind this.... A doctor can cure diseases but not fate, isn't that correct? Of course, this may be something that happened in a previous existence...”

My father thought for some time, then shook his head.

All the best doctors can bring the dead to life, as we know from the placards hanging outside their houses which we see when we walk past. But now a concession has been made, for physicians themselves admit: “Western doctors are best at surgery, while Chinese doctors are best at internal medicine.” But there was no Western-trained doctor in S—at that time. Indeed it had never occurred to anyone that there was such a thing in the world as a Western doctor. Hence, whenever anyone fell ill, all we could do was ask the direct descendants of the Yellow Emperor and Qi Bo to cure him. In the days of the Yellow Emperor, wizards and doctors were one; thus right down to the present his disciples can still see ghosts and believe that “the tongue is the intelligent sprout of the heart.” This is the “fate” of Chinese, which not even famous physicians are able to cure.

When he would not apply the efficacious remedy on his tongue and could not think of any avenging spirit he had wronged, naturally it was no use my father simply eating broken-drum boluses for over a hundred days. These drum pills proved unable to beat the dropsy, and finally my father lay at his last gasp on the bed. We invited Dr. Chen Lianhe once more—an emergency call this time, for ten silver dollars. Once more, he calmly wrote out a prescription.

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