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Chapter 1 of 20
本草纲目
Holistic Interpretation
The Compendium of Materia Medica is a monumental pharmacological work compiled by the Ming Dynasty physician Li Shizhen, who devoted over thirty years of painstaking effort to its creation. It was completed in the sixth year of the Wanli reign of the Ming Dynasty (1578 AD). The complete work comprises 52 volumes, containing approximately 1.9 million characters, and records 1,892 kinds of medicinal substances, organized into 60 categories (16 divisions and 62 subcategories), of which 374 were newly added by Li Shizhen. The book contains over 1,100 illustrations of medicinal substances and more than 11,000 appended prescriptions. Whether in terms of the rigor of its scientific classification, the richness of its recorded medicinal substances, or the fluency and vividness of its prose, it far surpassed all previous works on materia medica.
In this work, Li Shizhen corrected many erroneous understandings of medicinal effects held by his predecessors and verified drug efficacy and properties through field observation. For example, he confirmed that Dichroa febrifuga (Changshan) could treat malaria, and that Corydalis (Yanhusuo) could relieve pain. He also keenly pointed out the hidden dangers of chronic poisoning in daily life — such as using tin vessels for storing wine, where toxins in the tin would gradually dissolve into the wine, and long-term consumption could lead to chronic poisoning. Regarding the old claim in previous pharmacopoeias that "pangolins lure ants with their scales," he insisted that "seeing once is better than hearing a hundred times." He personally raised and observed live pangolins, discovering that they actually lick up ants with their tongues; upon dissecting their stomachs, he found as many as a sheng (approximately one liter) of ants inside, and thus wrote an accurate account.
Li Shizhen completed this magnum opus with a rigorous and pragmatic attitude. Because the book criticized the popular claims that mercury was "non-toxic" and that prolonged ingestion could lead to "becoming an immortal" or "eternal life" — at a time when both the court and the populace were deeply enamored with Daoist alchemy — no major publisher dared to print it after its completion. It was not until three years after his death, in 1596, that the Compendium of Materia Medica was finally published in Nanjing by Hu Chenglong, a private block-printing craftsman. Upon publication, it immediately aroused great反响 and became an essential reference for medical practitioners. From the 17th century onward, the work was successively translated into Japanese, German, English, French, Russian, and other languages. In the Pharmacopoeia of the People's Republic of China published in 1953, more than 100 medicinal substances and preparations from the Compendium of Materia Medica were adopted.
In terms of medicinal classification, the Compendium of Materia Medica broke through the "three-grade classification method" — superior, medium, and inferior — that had been followed for a thousand years, establishing instead a classification system of "distinguishing families and grouping categories, organizing the framework and dividing the branches." It first divided medicinal substances into three major classes: mineral drugs, botanical drugs, and animal drugs. Mineral drugs were subdivided into the sections of metals, jade, stones, and salts; botanical drugs were classified by properties, morphology, and growing environment into the sections of herbs, grains, vegetables, fruits, and trees, with the herb section further subdivided into mountain herbs, fragrant herbs, poisonous herbs, aquatic herbs, climbing herbs, rock herbs, and other subcategories; animal drugs were arranged according to evolutionary progression from lower to higher orders: insects, reptiles (scaly creatures), shelled creatures, birds, beasts, and human-related substances. The entire work comprises 16 divisions and 62 subcategories. This classificatory approach — from inorganic to organic, from simple to complex, from lower to higher — already approximated a prototype of classification according to natural evolutionary systems, and was particularly advanced in botanical classification, predating the Swedish taxonomist Linnaeus by approximately two hundred years.
The achievements of the Compendium of Materia Medica extend beyond pharmacology to notable contributions in chemistry, geology, and astronomy. In the history of chemistry, it recorded, at an early date, a series of chemical reactions involving pure metals, metal chlorides, and sulfides, as well as operational methods such as distillation, crystallization, sublimation, precipitation, and drying. Li Shizhen also proposed that the moon, like the earth, is a celestial body with mountains and rivers — "I humbly suggest that the moon is a condensation of yin essence, and the shadowy forms within it are but the reflections of mountains and rivers." Therefore, the Compendium of Materia Medica is not merely a monumental pharmacological work but can well be regarded as an encyclopedia of ancient China. As Li Shizhen's son, Li Jianyuan, stated in his Memorial Presenting the Compendium of Materia Medica to the Throne: "From the ancient classics to legendary tales, everything relevant was collected without omission; though named a medical book, it truly encompasses the principles of all things."
Concerning the publication journey: In his later years, Li Shizhen, at over seventy years of age, traveled from Wuchang to Nanjing — then the center of the publishing industry — seeking a private publisher to print the work. However, due to years of overwork, he eventually fell ill and took to his bed. On his deathbed, he instructed his descendants to present the book to the imperial court, hoping that through the authority of the government it would be disseminated to the world. In 1593, Li Shizhen passed away at the age of 76, never having lived to see his work published. Subsequently, the Wanli Emperor ordered all regions to submit books to enrich the imperial library. Li Jianyuan presented the Compendium of Materia Medica to the court but received merely a seven-character endorsement — "Book retained for perusal; Ministry of Rites duly informed" — before it was shelved. Ultimately, it was still published in Nanjing in 1596 by the private block-printing craftsman Hu Chenglong. In 1603, a reprint edition appeared in Jiangxi. Thereafter, it spread widely throughout the country, with more than thirty block-printed editions existing in China to this day. In 1606, the Compendium of Materia Medica was first introduced to Japan; in 1647, the Polish scholar Michael Boym translated it into Latin for circulation in Europe, and it was subsequently translated into Japanese, Korean, French, German, English, Russian, and other languages.
The core academic thought revealed in this introduction can be summarized on three levels:
First, "distinguishing families and grouping categories, organizing the framework and dividing the branches" — classification is cognition. Li Shizhen abandoned the "three-grade (superior, medium, inferior) classification" that had persisted for a millennium since the Shennong Bencao Jing (Divine Farmer's Classic of Materia Medica) — a system that graded drugs by practical attributes such as toxicity and suitability for prolonged use, essentially representing value judgments rather than natural classification. Instead, he adopted systematic classification based on natural attributes. Behind this shift lies a paradigm leap in cognition: medicinal substances were no longer merely accessories categorized as "useful/useless to humans" but were natural entities possessing their own intrinsic structure and evolutionary order. From minerals to plants to animals, from the insect section to the beast section to the human section, what is reflected is a view of a continuous spectrum proceeding "from inorganic to organic, from lower to higher." This mode of thinking was extremely rare within the 16th-century global context.
Second, "seeing once is better than hearing a hundred times" — the spirit of empirical verification. Li Shizhen's field investigation of the pangolin's feeding method, as well as his observation of chronic poisoning from tin vessels, embodies a plain empirical attitude. He did not treat previous pharmacopoeias as authoritative; rather, he relied on what he had seen with his own eyes and verified through personal experience. Within the traditional academic climate that championed "transmitting rather than creating, and trusting the ancient," this represents a remarkably valuable capacity for critical thinking.
Third, "though named a medical book, it truly encompasses the principles of all things" — a transdisciplinary vision. Li Shizhen clearly recognized that the boundaries of pharmacology were not sealed within the category of "medicine." The geographical origins of drugs relate to geography; processing techniques relate to chemistry; morphological descriptions relate to botany and zoology; harvesting seasons relate to astronomy and the calendar. Thus, the "encyclopedic" nature of the Compendium of Materia Medica was not a haphazard piling up of disparate content but rather the necessary extension of pharmacology's own logic into the broad vista of natural phenomena.
Content in this passage worth examining from a contemporary viewpoint can be assessed as follows:
Aspects that can be corroborated:
Aspects requiring balanced recognition:
Although this passage focuses primarily on introducing the work, certain general, non-therapeutic life principles can be distilled from it:
Associated Concepts:
Further Reading:
This content is based on classical texts of traditional Chinese medicine and is provided solely for the study and appreciation of traditional culture. It does not constitute any medical diagnosis, medication advice, or treatment recommendation. If you feel unwell, please seek medical attention promptly.