"Compendium Of Materia Medica" Shiming Research

Chinese traditional medicine is not only the precious cultural heritage of ourcountry, but also an important part of China’s glorious and resplendent ancient culture.In the vast medical classics,"Compendium of Materia Medica",Li Shizhen’s document,Ming Dynasty,was the best that fully described the compendium of Materia Medicadrugs. The document consisted of fifty-two volumes and contained sixteen kinds ofdrugs,which including over1800kinds of medicines (374new drugs comprised),andover10000kinds of prescriptions. On the basis of inheriting and summarizing themateria medica of achievements,Li Shizhen exhausted all his life.And it took Litwenty-seven years to complete the document which influenced the world. Because ofthe rich content and the wide information, the Qing Dynasty physician Zhao Xueminonce remarked it as:"involve all kinds of books and benefit to hundreds of generations". In order to complete this masterpiece, Li Shizhen wandered through all themountains and rivers of the motherland to investigate and referred to a large numberof previous medical books, the history books and records which contained anecdotesof hundreds of books. The document not only absorbed the essence of the previousherbal works,but also amended some errors of the previous Materia Medica ofpredecessors."Compendium of Materia Medica" is not only an important Chinesemasterpiece, but also our country’s ancient encyclopedia. At the same time, this bookpreserved a large number of the exegetical materials, which is one of the mostimportant works of exegesis.Because of the huge population and vast dominion, Chinese language has astrong regional and the dialect is various special.There may be different names for thesame thing or the same name for different things (the former is more popular). Afteryears of practice and on the basis of clinical experiment, Li Shizhen realised that itwas necessary for a good doctor to understand not only the medical knowledge butalso pharmacology knoledge. As a medical worker, it was very dangerous to mistakethe names,morphology and functions of drugs,which was concerned with people’s life.In order to let more doctors and drug users identify and use these drugs correctly, Li Shizhen explained drugs in his book "compendium of Materia Medica",which wasthe first time in the world. In the book Li Shizhen said:"explaining the names ofdrugs is to define, to explain the source of various drugs’ names,to rectify the name.’’In the book of"compendium of Materia Medica", nearly2000kinds of drugs whichcan be collected were listed, and each kind of drug was generally discharged withZhengming, Shiming, set solution, questioning, right and wrong, repair, odor,indications, invention and so on. Li Shizhen,with the scientific spirit and prudentattitude, listed the other different names of the1033kinds of medicines’ Shimingthrough collection. He tried his best to detailedly explain the meaning of these drugs’name and the original reason that he thought how to get their names.The shimming of"compendium of Materia Medica"was the beginning of exegesis,and it was alsoprecious materials to the later.In the Shiming items of "compendium of Materia Medica", Li Shizhen cited alarge number of books.It was said in the preface of "compendium of MateriaMedica"that "What I (Shizhen) cited was over two hundred and seventy-six except theold one". In the citation of ancient and modern history of hundreds of bibliographic, Itwas said that:"What Shizhen cited was four hundred and forty except the old one".Byusing the methods of science,Li Shizhen explained the recource of the drugs’ names asfar as possible. But there were still some improper explanation phenomenon in thebook as Li Shizhen was the famous medical scientist rather than famous scholiumhome.We could see some studies about the shimming of the "compendium of MateriaMedica" scattered some books and magazines. Zhou Luhong,the Shanxi UniversityofTraditionalChinese medicine,found that the name of the ancient traditionalChinesemedician was closely related to the font and meaning of the characters,and to thedrugs’ color, taste, shape, function as well. Huang Xiaoxiao,of Soochow University,whose Shiming exegesis theory of"compendium of Materia Medica ’’ explained theregulation and mode of the main line, summarized the methods of "compendium ofMateria Medica" Shiming, and further explored the source of motivation andcharacteristics of exegesis. Some documents analysed the error of Shiming item,suchas "compendium of Materia Medica ’Shiming’ the mistake",Mr. Shao Zesui of the South-Central University For Nationalities;"compendium of Materia Medica’Shiming’ the mistake", Aman Chang’s "compendium of Materia Medica><nameerror training examples, a" Sun Fengxia "" compendium of Materia Medica> and soon.This paper studied the shimming of all drugs from the angle of exegesis.It wasfound that though Li Shizhen was very cautious in the drug release, there was stillmisunderstanding ignored in his drug explanation. In this paper,the authorsystematically cleaned out84misinterpretation by analysing one by one,and renamedthem from the sound training, shape training,continuous words, semantictransliteration. In addition, the paper named16items uninvolved in"compendium ofMateria Medica".At the end,the author summarized the mistakes in "compendium of MateriaMedica"and drew the following conclusions. First, as a great medical scietist,LiShizhen was not a great linguist. He was limited in exegetical foundation though heexplained the source of the drug names scientificly and precisely. So there were manyfalse training in the "compendium of Materia Medica". Second, Li Shizhen cited alarge number of books. According to statistics, only when Shiming, Li Shizhen citedmore than270kinds of books. But he cited the book without discrimination andblindly believed the cited books. Altering the ancient books prevailed in the MingDynasty,in that environment, Li Shizhen’s quotes,which were withoutdiscrimination,led to the error in his book. Third, it was difficult to research names,especially to research plants’ names."Compendium of Materia Medica" receivednearly2000species of the medicine.Clearly,it was a hard work to explain the sourceof so many drug names. So was it to a good language and literature worker. And LiShizhen was just a medical scholar, so it was normal to exist some error in"compendium of Materia Medica" Shiming.In general,the shimming in Li Shizhen’s "compendium of Materia Medica"wasreasonable and convicted. The methods he used in exploring the source of nameswere scientific and reasonable. Despite the error of shimming, the contents notconformed to modern discrepancies, and even the color of superstition in some places,the contribution of "compendium of Materia Medica" in history isundeniable.