Bencao Gangmu: Compendium of Materia Medica

Li Shizhen's 410-year-old classic, Bencao Gangmu: Compendium of Materia Medica, with its lore chronicling centuries of Chinese medical achievement, is a treasure trove of information on traditional Chinese medicine and on Chinese folk views of the world, which underlie many of the prescribed treatment regimens.

With the publication of the Compendium of Materia Medica, not only did it improve the classification of how traditional medicine was compiled and formatted, but it was also a great medium in improving the credibility and scientific values of biology classification of both plants and animals.

The compendium corrected many mistakes and false understandings of the nature of herbs and illness. Li also included many new herbs, added his own discovery in certain drugs, their effectiveness and function, as well as more detailed description according to experiments. It also has notes and records on general medical data and medical history.

Compendium of Materia Medica is also more than a pharmaceutical text, for it contains information so vast that it covered topics in biology, chemistry, geography, geology, history, and even mining and astronomy, which would seem to have little to do with herbal medicine. It has been translated into more than 20 languages and spread all over the world. Even now it is still in print and used as a reference book.