by Eric Brand

During the Ming dynasty in 1590 CE, Li Shi-Zhen completed one of the most important works of Chinese literature, the Ben Cao Gang Mu (Herbal Foundation Compendium). While the clinical utility of this text is limited by its vast size, the Ben Cao Gang Mu is one of the most famous works ever produced in Chinese medicine. Featured in many Chinese history museums and mentioned in the basic education of most Chinese high school students, this text was groundbreaking in its scope and scholarship.

Listing 1,892 substances from throughout Li's extensive travels, the Ben Cao Gang Mu was the most comprehensive materia medica ever written until the publication of the Zhong Yao Da Ci Dian (Great Encyclopedia of Chinese Medicinals) in 1975. Beyond the field of Chinese medicine, the Ben Cao Gang Mu held important information relevant to many disciplines, and it was a hallmark text that encapsulated the Chinese tradition of scholarship. It has been translated into English, but unfortunately it was not done with the systematic translation style best suited to classical works, and its prohibitive expense and size makes it more commonly seen in institutional libraries rather than typical practitioner offices.

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Below is an excerpt from my book Concise Chinese Materia Medica. Much of this content, found in the Introduction, was written by Sabine Wilms, an expert in Chinese medical history. Nigel Wiseman contributed to this excerpt as well.

"Toward the end of the sixteenth century, the famous naturalist and practicing physician Lǐ Shí-Zhēn completed what is arguably the greatest masterpiece of the Chinese materia medica tradition, the Běn Cǎo Gāng Mù (本草纲目 Comprehensive Materia Medica). It took a full 27 years of single-minded textual and empirical research to produce, and it exhibits a stunning depth of scholarship with quotations from 952 pharmaceutical and other texts. It also rested on Lǐ’s extensive personal field work and his travels all over China, so it contains a great deal of information on local and folk traditions. The medicinal information found in it is generally more concrete and better suited for application by medical practitioners than that found in previous works. In addition, the text is of great relevance not only for the field of pharmaceutics, but also for the natural sciences in general, such as zoology, botany, mineralogy, and metallurgy.

Perhaps its greatest contribution is the innovative way in which Lǐ arranged the 1,892 substances covered in the text. Correcting what he saw as inconsistencies and categorical confusions in previous works, he established ten sections in logical succession: “First are waters and fires followed by soils, since water and fire are the predecessors of all things and earth is the mother of all things. Next are metals and minerals since they come from the earth. Next are herbs, grains, vegetables, fruits, and trees, proceeding from the tiny to the huge. Next are clothes and utensils, [since they are made from] herbs and trees. Next are “worms” (虫 chóng, a category including insects, spiders, snails and slugs, frogs and similar creatures), and then scaly, shelled, winged, and four-legged creatures, concluding with humans in a progression from the most base to the most noble.” The sixteen sections further comprised sixty different subcategories. In an innovative scheme, he added new sections and replaced the traditional order for listing medicinal substances with a grand new scheme of categorizing the natural world as a whole. This makes Lǐ Shí-Zhēn among the most important figures in the history of science in China.

The individual drug monographs in the Běn Cǎo Gāng Mù give a variety of information about standard and alternate names for the substance, about its cultivation and harvest, origin, appearance, and identification, and a section called “correcting mistakes.” The monographs also describe the processing of the medicinal drug, its nature, flavor, properties, therapeutic indications, miscellaneous notes, and related formulas. With this format, Lǐ Shí-Zhēn thus integrated the two distinct textual categories of materia medica and formula literature, while at the same time incorporating substantial information derived from his personal interest in natural history. He thereby created a voluminous encyclopedia that far transcended the traditional content of materia medica texts. It became the prime source of information for all following authors, and it constitutes the historical apex of comprehensive pharmaceutical literature in China. Its continuing significance is reflected in numerous recent editions, some of which include information about modern research, clinical usage, or scientific identification.

Although Lǐ Shí-Zhēn is one of the most important figures in the history of science in China, his comprehensive approach resulted in a work of prohibitive size and cost that was thus of little use for the average practicing physician or pharmacist. His Běn Cǎo Gāng Mù was therefore never matched in size by any materia medica work until the latter half of the 20th century when a team of scholars created the Zhōng Yào Dà Cí Diǎn, (中医大词典 Great Dictionary of Chinese Medicinals). This text covers 5,767 medicinals, of which 4,773 are plant-based, 740 are animal-based, 82 are of mineral origin, and 172 are traditional prepared substances. The entries are organized not thematically, but, as in a dictionary, by number of strokes and radical. The text provides information on standard names, alternate names, botanical identification, regional variations, source of the substance (plant, animal, mineral), cultivation, harvesting, preparation, preservation, chemical ingredients, medicinal action according to Chinese medical theory as well as from a biomedical framework, nature and flavor, channel entry, actions and indications, usage and dosage, contraindications, selected formulas, clinical reports, and individual discussions. It collects many of the often conflicting statements from the traditional Běn Cǎo literature. The Zhōng Yào Dà Cí Diǎn is thus a very comprehensive and rich reference work on the Chinese materia medica.

As Chinese medical training has undergone a transition from the traditional master-apprentice system to modern university-style education, educators have realized the need for Chinese medical textbooks that efficiently teach the most clinically essential elements of a vast and complex body of traditional knowledge. In the latter half of the 20th century, materia medica textbooks became part of a continually updated series of government-approved textbooks covering many facets of Chinese medicine: basic theory, diagnostics, materia medica, formulas, acupuncture, tuīná, gynecology, external medicine, internal medicine, and many other areas of expertise, such as fundamental classical texts and doctrines of famous doctors over the ages. It is on these textbooks that the major current materia medica works in English, including the Concise Chinese Materia Medica, are based."