Download or read book Dictionary of the Ben cao gang mu, Volume 1 written by Zhibin Zhang and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2014-12-12 with total page 769 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Ben cao gang mu, compiled in the second half of the sixteenth century by a team led by the physician Li Shizhen (1518–1593) on the basis of previously published books and contemporary knowledge, is the largest encyclopedia of natural history in a long tradition of Chinese materia medica works. Its description of almost 1,900 pharmaceutically used natural and man-made substances marks the apex of the development of premodern Chinese pharmaceutical knowledge. The Ben cao gang mu dictionary offers access to this impressive work of 1,600,000 characters. This first book in a three-volume series analyzes the meaning of 4,500 historical illness terms.