English
李時珍(1518-1593)
Li Shizhen (1518∼1593) worked in his family’s herbal shop During his childhood, and accompanied his father on visits to patients. His father had dreams of his son becoming a civil servant, but Li repeatedly failed the official examinations and was obliged to remain in the family business. In 1552, he began work on his materia medica, a compendium he wished to be free of the errors of past publications. During these years, he was admitted to the Academy of Medicine in Beijing, a prestigious institution for promising and famous physicians. Disappointed with the experience, he returned to his hometown and traveled all over China, visiting such provinces as Henan, Anhui, Jiangxi and Hubei to gather information for his book. He took Tang Shenwei’s Classified Materia Medica (zheng lei ben cao) as references, carried out a lot of revision and supplement works, and also added in his own discovers and opinions. The Compendium of Materia Medica (ben cao gang mu) was not published until 1596, three years after Li’s death.
The giant book contained 52 sections with huge and substantial in content, which had made a great influence to the world. Its contributions includes (1.) The book summarized most of drug information available in the sixteenth century. Li unveiled 374 new drugs in his text in a list of 1,892 totally and also included over 1,000 illustrations and over 10,000 prescriptions. (2.) He revised the classification of drugs that included 16 headings and 60 types, somewhat similar to the scientific classification of nowadays. (3.) He expanded the list of known drugs and grouped up the contents systemically, corrected previous errors, and created guidelines for the collection, preparation and use of each drug.
