The patron-gods of health and of longevity, Chinese, Greek and Indian.

Man needed health as individual but power of reproduction to maintain his race. The early man used single plants to cure his complaints. Thus arose herbalism. To increase his reproductive power he preferred a mixture of drugs. Thus we find two patron gods in all important systems of medicine. There were two theories: like makes like and Blood=e Scu l, and Redness is its active principle. In China gold was believed to make the body everlasting. Peach, which is red at the core, became the drug of longevity. Shou Hshing, the god of longevity, emerges from the Peach. But peach cannot keep long. Then to preserve the body as everlasting, gold would be the drug, and to obtain longevity it would be red cinnaber. But the ideal drug of immortality must represent unity. What is one cannot be separated so that with it body and soul would combine into unity. For it the drug would be, when gold becomes red like cinnabar or cinnabar becomes heat-resistant like gold. The Chinese took gold granules and rubbed them with the juice of a herb of longevity. The r ssuttant was red colloidal gold, in Chinese Chin-I. gold-cum-plant juice. In Fukin dialect Chin-I=Kim-lya. The pre-Islamic Arabs bringing silk for Alexandria learnt of this drug whence Kim-lya=AI-Kimiya; hence the word Alchemy. If herbalism had Shou -Hshing as the patron god, synthetic colloidal gold, or Kim-Iya, had Tsao-Chiin, as qod. the god of furnace. But Chin-I was only brick led. Then they took sulpher, mercury and a little gold and sublimed them. The result was blood-red vermilion with traces of gold. It was called Chin-Tan, gold-cum-cinnabar. It entered Indian medicine as Makardhwaja. Blood gives two fractions, a volatile vapour which became a bird, later bird-god. The main fraction went underground and became a snake, later snake-god. The Greeks had their snake god Asclepius who was god of herbalism. The pastoral Greeks wanted greater reproduction among their flocks. Herm means an erect stone, a