How many kinds of herbs are there in Compendium of Materia Medica?

Compendium of Materia Medica contains 52 volumes 1832 kinds of traditional Chinese medicines, which are divided into 16 parts (outline) and 62 categories (orders). 1-4 is the appendix of the book, including preface, examples, catalogue, drawings, bibliography, materials and some basic medical theories. After the fifth volume, it is the main part of this book. Li Shizhen divided 1832 drugs into 16 parts: water part, fire part, soil part, stone part, grass part, grain part, vegetable part, fruit part, wood part, medicinal part, insect part, scale part, medium part, poultry part, animal part and human part. Each part is divided into several categories, * * * 62 categories. Among them, there are 0/095 species of plants, 440 species of animals and 357 species of minerals.

Under each drug, the following explanations are given respectively:

1. Summary-Explain the ancient and modern origin, evolution, morphology and collection methods of this medicine.

2. Name explanation-describe the sexual synonyms of ancient and modern medicines and determine the names.

3. Right and wrong-correct the mistakes of the ancients and ordinary people.

4. Repair-Describe how to make it into medicine.

5. Smell-Record the nature and taste of this drug.

6. Indications-Explain the efficacy and use of this drug.

7. Invention-Expound your own experience in observing experiments.

8. Attached prescription-clinical prescriptions of ancient and modern doctors.

China's crude drugs have always been dominated by vegetation. Compendium of Materia Medica contains nearly 2000 kinds of drugs, including rice, beans, flowers and fruits, as well as insects, fish, birds, animals, jade and other animals and minerals. To sum up their titles with "Materia Medica" is probably related to the words "Daofang, Materia Medica is cold and warm, and the disease is shallow and deep ..." and so on.

Because this book has a large number of drugs and various classifications, I won't go into details here. We only take the medicinal materials of animals in the book as an example to see the key points. There are 440 kinds of medicines for animals. In addition to the highest-ranking people, Li Shizhen also divided them into five categories: insects, scales, Chinese, birds and beasts. Roughly speaking:

1. Insects-most of them are equivalent to insects in modern biology (including a few amphibians).

2. Scale-equivalent to fish and reptiles.

3. Medium-equivalent to mollusk snails.

4. bird-bird.

5. Animals-mammals.

At the same time, the book contains 1096 kinds of clinical prescriptions of doctors in past dynasties, of which 8 100 kinds were added.

Since the first publication of Compendium of Materia Medica in Jinling (now Nanjing) in the 24th year of Wanli (AD 1596), it has not only achieved unprecedented success in China, but also been widely circulated abroad. Even Darwin, a great British scientist who founded the theory of evolution, mentioned this book many times in his works and called it "the encyclopedia of China published in 1596". The first edition of Compendium of Materia Medica was published in Jinling Edition. In addition to a large number of original editions, it was circulated page by page. There were many abridged versions of Compendium of Materia Medica, Compendium of Materia Medica and Compendium of Materia Medica in Qing Dynasty, as well as versions of Compendium of Materia Medica and Compendium of Materia Medica. There are not only various reprints of Japan abroad, but also the fully translated Compendium of Materia Medica. In addition, there are more than ten kinds of English, French, German, Russian, Latin and Korean translations from eastern and western countries.