Classical Materia Medica: Shennong Bencao Jing and Li Shizhen's Bencao Gangmu

What a "bencao" is

In China, books that record the sources and uses of medicinal materials are called bencao, usually translated materia medica. The word literally means "rooted in herbs", because most medicinal materials are plants, though the books also include minerals and animal products. [1] A review by researchers at Hong Kong Baptist University says one large modern collection of these texts includes more than 800 bencao classics from 220 BC to 1911 AD. [1] This page covers the best known: the Shennong Bencao Jing and Li Shizhen's Bencao Gangmu (Compendium of Materia Medica), with the texts between them.

Shennong Bencao Jing (Divine Husbandman's Classic of Materia Medica)

The Hong Kong review calls it the earliest extant bencao text, compiled in the Eastern Han dynasty (25-220 AD). It records 365 medicinals and sorts them into high, medium and low grades according to their effects and toxicity. Entries give names, properties, compatibilities and uses. [1] A 2026 review dates it to about 200 CE. [2]

The Chinese government's 2016 report says the text outlines how medicinal ingredients are combined: a prescription should include jun (sovereign), chen (minister), zuo (assistant) and shi (messenger) ingredients, and take account of the "four natures" and "five flavors". [3] These are traditional frameworks for describing and combining substances. You can read about them in Formula Structure: Jun, Chen, Zuo, Shi and Five Flavors and Four Natures. The name links the book to Shennong, the "Celestial Farmer" of tradition; the report presents "Shennong tasting a hundred herbs" as a saying from early times, not as a documented person. [3]

The texts in between and after

The review also lists "thematic" bencao on single topics, such as the first monograph on processing medicinals (about 500 AD) and a Tang text on diet therapy, and "regional" bencao on the materials of one area. [1]

Li Shizhen and the Bencao Gangmu

Li Shizhen (1518-1593) was born into a family of physicians in Qizhou, in present-day Hubei. A 2026 review says he worked 27 years on the Compendium, which was completed in 1578 and published after his death, in 1596. The work spans 52 volumes and organizes 1,892 drug species into sixteen departments and sixty categories, with 11,096 prescriptions and 1,109 illustrations, drawing on more than forty earlier materia medica. [2] The same review describes a standard entry format: names and synonyms, origins, collection and processing, properties, uses, description, corrections of earlier errors, and formulas. [2]

The Compendium is a historical and scientific landmark. The review compares its four-level classification (kingdom, department, category, species) with later European taxonomy, but stresses the comparison is structural and analogical, that the book is a pharmacopoeia and not a theory of evolution, and that its ordering reflects a Chinese cosmological framework. [2] It is also worth knowing that a popular story says Charles Darwin called the book an "ancient Chinese encyclopedia" (a claim repeated in the Chinese government report); the 2026 review says this attribution "remains unverified". [2][4] The Compendium was inscribed on UNESCO's Memory of the World Register in 2011. [2]

What the old texts do and do not tell us

• They record traditional use and observation. An entry describes what compilers believed or had been told. A listing in a classic is "traditional use only" until trials test the specific herb for a specific use. NCCIH says studies of Chinese herbal products have had mixed results and many were of poor quality. [5]
• They sometimes guide research. The Nobel committee describes how Tu Youyou, looking for malaria treatments, "revisited the ancient literature" and found clues that helped her extract artemisinin from Artemisia annua. [6] That is one documented success, told in Artemisinin and Tu Youyou. One success does not validate every entry.
• They include substances now seen as unsafe or protected. The Compendium's departments include minerals and animal products, not only plants. [2] Safety and conservation questions about such ingredients are covered in Animal and Mineral Ingredients in TCM.
• They are not dosing or self-treatment guides. This library does not reproduce recipes or amounts. NCCIH reports that some Chinese herbal products have been contaminated with undeclared drugs, heavy metals or the wrong plant, and some incorrect herbs have caused organ damage. [5] See Chinese Herbal Products: Quality, Contamination and Medicine Interactions.