By Eric Brand

I've made several posts about the work of Prof. Zhao Zhongzhen, one of the world's leading experts in herbal medicine authentication. Prof. Zhao is somewhat akin to a modern day Li Shi-Zhen, with his tireless pursuit of scholarship and his attention to culture, science, and tradition. I wrote a blog about Prof. Zhao in my blog series on Modern Masters, which can be found here. Today I'd like to post links to some of his work that is available for free on the internet.

...

Here is a link to one of Prof. Zhao's scientific papers, titled "A Systematic Study on Confused Species of Chinese Materia Medica in the Hong Kong Market." This paper covers many of the same issues in herbal identification that affect the U.S. market. This is a great article, very comprehensive and representative of his work.

This link has an interesting article on the effects of different binders on the absorption of herbal extracts. Also a very interesting read.

For some slightly more technical articles on herbal authentication and chemistry, check out this article on the quality discernment of Danshen and this article on the assessment of Huo Xiang.

The full text of each of the articles above is available for free in PDF form. The same Pubmed search on Dr. Zhao pulls up many other articles that must be purchased, including this very interesting article on Fu Zi toxicity and a fascinating article on medicinal plants used by the minority Hakka culture in Guangdong Province. If you have access to a university library that maintains Pubmed subscriptions for full-text journal articles, these articles are worth checking out.

Prof. Zhao also has his own blog. It is in Chinese, but if you can read Chinese his blog is a treasure house of information. Use the index on the left to browse it by category- for example, the section on one medicinal per day has a ton of great information and some great photos. Here is the link to Prof. Zhao's blog.

Seeing the work of experts such as Prof. Zhao is quite inspirational, it reminds us all what true expertise in Chinese medicine really means. Over time I plan to help translate some of his blog entries into English so that Western readers can enjoy more access to this excellent material.