Classification of Chinese herbal medicines

Classification method of traditional Chinese medicine

There are many kinds of Chinese herbal medicines. According to preliminary statistics in recent years, there are about 8,000 species in total, and about 700 species of Chinese herbal medicines are commonly used. Such a wide variety must be classified according to a certain system to facilitate learning, research and application. The method of drug classification is constantly developing according to people's understanding of drugs. For example, the earliest drug book in China, Shennong Materia Medica Classic, divided 365 kinds of drugs commonly used at that time into three categories according to their toxicity and use: the top grade is life-prolonging drugs, which are nontoxic and won't hurt people if taken for a long time, while the Chinese products are disease-preventing tonics, which are toxic and nontoxic, depending on dosage and usage; Inferior products are drugs for treating diseases, which are toxic and cannot be taken for a long time. This classification method is simple and rough, and the classification of some drugs may not be appropriate. But it may have played a certain role at that time, avoiding the poisoning caused by using the wrong medicine. When Tao Hongjing compiled Compendium of Materia Medica in Liang Dynasty, 365 kinds of drugs were added, which were divided into six categories: jade, grass, wood, fruits and vegetables, rice food, famous use and unused, and each category was divided into three categories: upper, middle and lower. This is the beginning of the classification of drugs according to their natural properties, but it is still rough. It was not until Li Shizhen compiled Compendium of Materia Medica in Ming Dynasty that the classification method developed greatly. On the basis of predecessors' materia medica, he adopted a slightly modified classification method, and divided the drugs into sixteen parts, namely, water, fire, soil, stone, grass, grain, vegetables, fruits, wood, utensils, insects, scales, media, birds, animals and people, and divided the drugs into sixty categories according to their ecology and nature. For example, the grass part is mountain grass, vanilla, weeds, poisonous weeds, creeping weeds, aquatic plants, stony grass, moss, weeds and so on. Moreover, he often arranges plants with similar relatives or the same family and genus together. For example, among the 53 drugs in Four Grasses and Grasses, 2 1 species belong to Compositae, among which 10 species are arranged together. This classification method is helpful to identify and harvest the original plants (or animals) of medicinal materials and plays a great role in clarifying the confusion of many medicinal materials at that time. There are four main classification methods of Chinese herbal medicines recorded in modern textbooks according to their different uses and emphases:

1. Classified by drug function-such as antidotes, antipyretics, qi-regulating drugs, drugs for promoting blood circulation and removing blood stasis, etc.

2. According to the classification of medicinal parts-such as roots, leaves, flowers, skins, etc.

3. Classification according to effective components-such as Chinese herbal medicines containing alkaloids, Chinese herbal medicines containing volatile oils, Chinese herbal medicines containing glycosides, etc.

4. Classification according to natural attributes and kinship-First, Chinese herbal medicines are divided into plant medicines, animal medicines and mineral medicines. Animals and plants are classified and arranged according to the kinship of their original vivid plants. Such as Ephedraceae, Magnoliaceae, Ranunculaceae, etc.

Each of the above classification methods has its own advantages and disadvantages, and which classification method is suitable mainly depends on our purpose and requirements. For example, classification according to drug function is helpful to learn and study the functions and uses of Chinese medicinal materials, and classification according to medicinal parts is convenient to learn and compare the external morphology and internal structure of various Chinese medicinal materials, thus facilitating the character identification and microscopic identification of Chinese medicinal materials; The classification of effective components is conducive to learning and studying the effective components of Chinese herbal medicines and their chemical identification. The classification method based on natural attributes and kinship of medicinal materials is adopted because Chinese medicinal materials belonging to the same family and genus often have many similarities in external morphology, internal structure, chemical composition and medical application. Using this classification method, it is not only convenient to learn and study these similarities, but also convenient to compare their similarities and reveal their regularity. This will help to identify Chinese herbal medicines, find animals and plants with the same or similar components from animals and plants in the same family, and expand drug resources.