Bencao Gangmu (simplified Chinese: 本草纲目; traditional Chinese: 本草綱目; pinyin: Běncǎo Gāngmù; Wade–Giles: Pen-ts'ao Kang-mu), also known as Compendium of Materia Medica, is a Chinese materia medica work written by Li Shizhen in the Ming Dynasty. It is a work epitomizing materia medica (本草) in the Ming Dynasty. The Bencao Gangmu is regarded as the most complete and comprehensive medical book ever written in the history of traditional Chinese medicine. It lists all the plants, animals, minerals, and other items that were believed to have medicinal properties.
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The Bencao Gangmu title, which Unschuld (1986:145) translates as "Materia Medica, Arranged according to Drug Descriptions and Technical Aspects," uses two Chinese compounds. Bencao ("roots and herbs; based on herbs, pharmacopeia, materia medica") combines ben (本 "root; origin; basis") and cao (草 "grass; plant; herb"). Gangmu ("detailed outline; table of contents") combines gang (綱 "main rope, hawser; main threads, essential principles") and mu (目 "eye; look; category, division").
The characters 綱 and 目 were later used as "class" and "order" respectively in biological classification.
Li Shizhen completed the first draft of the text in 1578, after conducting readings of 800 other medical reference books and carrying out 30 years of field study. For this and many other achievements Li Shizhen is compared to Shennong, a mythological God in Chinese myth who gave instruction on agriculture and herbal medicine.
The Compendium of Materia Medica has 53 volumes in total:
1. At the very beginning is the table of contents, containing a list of entries included and 1,160 hand drawn diagrams to serve as illustrations.
2. Volume 1 to 4 — an 'index' (序例) and a comprehensive list of herbs that would treat the most common sickness (百病主治藥).
3. Volume 5 to 53 — the main content of the text, containing 1,892 distinct herbs, of which 374 were added by Li himself. There are 11,096 side prescriptions to treat common illness (8,160 of which is compiled or collected by Li).
The text is written in almost 2 million Chinese characters, classified into 16 divisions and 60 orders. For every herb there are entries on their names, a detailed description of their appearance and odor, nature, medical function, effects and side recipes etc.
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 important medium in improving the credibility and scientific values of biology classification of both plants and animals.
The compendium corrected many mistakes and misapprehensions of the nature of herbs and diseases. Li also included many new herbs, adding his own discoveries of particular drugs and their efficacity and function, as well as more detailed descriptions of the results of experiments. It also has notes and records on general medical data and medical history.
The Compendium of Materia Medica is also more than a mere pharmaceutical text, for it includes a vast amount of information on topics as wide ranging as biology, chemistry, geography, mineralogy, geology, history, and even mining and astronomy, which might appear to have little connection 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.
The Compendium of Materia Medica also contains information that has since been proven to be erroneous due to the contemporary limited scientific and technical knowledge. For example, it is claimed that lead is not toxic.
Bencao Gangmu is the title of a song performed by Taiwanese singer Jay Chou in his album Still Fantasy. The lyrics discuss Chinese pride, and make references to aspects of Chinese herbal medicine.
