In 1975, Chunyangtang published a replica of the Compendium of Materia Medica
Bu Mig, Flora of China, Chinese edition, Central China Normal University Press, 2013
English translation of Wen Shude's Compendium of Materia Medica, University of California Press, 2020
If Chinese medicine is a relatively complete chinese knowledge system, then the Compendium of Materia Medica is a wonderful textbook for understanding Chinese culture and knowledge system. It combines the grass, trees, fish and insects in nature with the operation of human life, and protects life with the essence of all things, showing the unique charm of Chinese culture hundreds of years ago.
The Compendium of Materia Medica is a collection of Chinese medicinal texts from chinese medicine before the 16th century. In the Ming Dynasty, Li Shizhen successively referred to nearly 800 classics such as 41 kinds of Materia Medica of the past dynasties, more than 270 kinds of ancient and modern medical works, and 440 kinds of jingshi hundreds of classics, and sorted out, summarized, revised, and supplemented, which lasted 27 years and changed their manuscripts three times, forming this huge 52-volume masterpiece.
In 1596, the Jinling Ben "Compendium of Materia Medica" was published. It records 1892 kinds of various drugs, 11096 prescriptions, 1109 pictures, expands the content of Materia Medica, corrects the bias in the works of Materia Medica in previous dynasties, standardizes the structure of the body, classifies the drugs reasonably, and also puts forward its own unique insights in minerals, chemistry, astronomy and meteorology, geology and phenology, which is the most comprehensive, richest and most systematic classic of Chinese medicine in ancient Chinese works. Its Chinese version can be roughly divided into "one ancestor and three lineages", that is, the ancestral ben (Jinling ben, regent tang ben) and jiangxi ben, qian ben, zhang ben three systems.
In the 426 years since the advent of the Compendium of Materia Medica, there has been an average of one engraving and printing every 2.2 years, which is the most re-engraved Chinese scientific works known at home and abroad. In November 2021, based on the search of the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), the author retrieved 3691 pieces of information based on the search of the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), using the "Compendium of Materia Medica" as the title of the book and the non-Chinese of the limited language, of which 701 were foreign language books, 2958 were book materials, 667 were online publications, and 44 were video materials.
Compendium of Materia Medica in Asia
The dissemination of the "Compendium of Materia Medica" in Asia is that officials, emissaries, medical professionals and international students from neighboring countries come to China as the main body of dissemination, and has a major impact on medical affairs such as medical concoction in relevant countries and regions; the other is that the immigrant groups Chinese mainland have brought the "Compendium of Materia Medica" to relevant countries and regions as a standing book of life, which can be described as a folk channel and has a more extensive influence.
In 1607, Lin Luoshan, a Japanese Kyoto native who had published a large number of Chinese books, donated it to Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogunate of the Edo period, after receiving the Jinling edition of the Compendium of Materia Medica in Nagasaki. Tokugawa Ieyasu was so cherished that he placed it on the right side of the shogunate for inspection and was enshrined as the "Divine Emperor Gozen".
Since then, Japan has published a number of annotations and research monographs on the Compendium of Materia Medica, such as "Medicinal Properties and Poisons" written by the famous Japanese physician Qu Nao se Genshuo in 1608, and "Many Knowledges" written by Lin Luoshan in 1612. The first reprint was the 1637 Edition of Yaji Noda's Right Guard Gate, with Japanese kana and punctuation next to the Chinese. According to statistics, before the 1870s, there were more than 30 kinds of monographs on the "Compendium of Materia Medica" in Japan, and even formed two schools specializing in the study of Materia Medica, the Kyoto School and the Edo School.
From 1929 to 1934, Chunyangtang in Tokyo, Japan, successively published 15 volumes of the "Compendium of Herbs for Translation of the First Commentary on the Country", known as the "Chunyangtang Ben". It translated the entire text of the original book into modern Japanese, with proofreading and indexing, and was the first complete Japanese translation of the Compendium of Materia Medica. According to the author's search, there are more than 210 kinds of books on the "Compendium of Materia Medica" in Japan, and the most influential ones are "Enlightenment of the Compendium of Materia Medica", "Universal Salvation Class", "Guangyi Materia Medica", "New Annotation and Correction of the Compendium of Chinese Translation of Materia Medica", "Compendium of Chinese Translation of Materia Medica: 52 volumes, 10 volumes of Collection" and so on.
According to records, in 1712, Korean envoys brought back the Compendium of Materia Medica to Korea, but due to its excessive length, no engraved version was produced, but only circulated in the form of a manuscript. Korean scholars and physicians have annotated and studied the "Compendium of Materia Medica" one after another, and written many new medical books, such as the "Jizhong New Edition" written by Kang Mingji in 1799, which together with the "Integrative Formula of Rural Medicine" and the "Treasure Book of Eastern Medicine" and called the three major medical books of Korea, quoted a large number of contents of the "Compendium of Materia Medica"; Hong Dezhou compiled and compiled it into the "Consistent Compendium" according to the appendix of the "Compendium of Materia Medica". After entering the 20th century, several Korean translations of the Compendium of Materia Medica appeared in Korea.
Where there are Chinese, there are Chinese herbal medicines, there are "Compendium of Materia Medica", as evidenced by the Traditional Chinese medicine shops in Chinatowns all over the world. Today, you can see a wide variety of Chinese herbal medicines in large shopping malls and supermarkets in Bangkok, Thailand, Manila, the Philippines, and Singapore. In the subtlety of thousands of years, Chinese medicine has been recognized, accepted and used by other ethnic groups in East Asia, Southeast Asia, South Asia and other ethnic groups, and has become a necessity for protecting human life and health.
"Compendium of Materia Medica" in Europe and the United States
Different from the spread in Asia, the main body of dissemination of the Compendium of Materia Medica in Europe and the United States was missionaries to China. In 1650, the Polish Catholic missionary bumiger wrote a book in Latin in the form of an illustrated and Latin book, a considerable part of which is based on the Compendium of Materia Medica. Published in Vienna in 1656, the book pioneered the study and translation of the Compendium of Materia Medica by Europeans. In 2013, Zhang Zhenhui, a researcher at the Institute of Foreign Literature of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, translated it into Chinese.
In 1735, du hedd, a Jesuit priest and sinologist in Paris, France, edited and compiled the correspondence, writings and research reports of 27 missionaries in China, and wrote the "Complete Chronicle of the Chinese Empire", of which the third volume excerpted and translated part of the "Compendium of Materia Medica", introducing 60 types of Materia Medica and dozens of medicines, which was the first French excerpt translation of the Compendium of Materia Medica, which caused a sensation in Europe after publication. The Complete Chronicle of the Chinese Empire was reprinted several times and later translated into German and Russian.
According to Needham' research, previously, the French physician Van der Mond obtained the "Compendium of Materia Medica" in 1732 when practicing medicine in Macau, and collected 80 mineral specimens from the drug records in the book, which were compiled as "The Drugs of Water, Fire, Earth, and Stone in the Compendium of Materia Medica", but it was not until 1896 that all of them were published through De Méri's book "Chinese Golden Stone".
After the 20th century, a number of German and English excerpts appeared in the Compendium of Materia Medica. In 1920, the American scholar Mills translated the Compendium of Materia Medica into more than 40 manuscripts while teaching in Korea.
On this basis, the British scholar Yi Bo'en, who is engaged in clinical research in China, cooperated with the Chinese scholars Liu Ruqiang, Li Yutian and the Korean scholar Park Zhubing, and completed the English translation of the contents of the "Compendium of Materia Medica" in 1941, including the grass, valley, fruit, wood, animal, human, poultry, scale, intermediate, insect, and jinshi parts, although it is not a full translation, it reflects the essence and characteristics of the original book more faithfully, providing more convenience for Western readers to read the "Compendium of Materia Medica", which was published by Southhern in 1977 Materials Center, published by Inc. Press, has been reprinted ever since.
At present, the greatest influence in the English-speaking world is the nine-volume English edition of the "Compendium of Materia Medica" translated by Wen Shude, a German medical historian and sinologist, for many years, which is accompanied by a large number of annotations and rigorous research, and is the first full English translation of the "Compendium of Materia Medica", which will be published by the University of California Press in 2020.
The Compendium of Materia Medica improves the traditional classification method, the format is uniform, the narrative is more scientific and rigorous, not only a pharmaceutical work, but also a naturalistic work with worldwide influence, which has a lofty position in the history of science. To this day, it still reminds human society in the 21st century to find ways and means to strengthen the body and resist diseases from the natural world. The invention of artemisinin to treat malaria is a typical example of how Chinese culture and knowledge systems still play a huge role today. In 2020, the outbreak of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, Lianhua Qingpeng capsules (granules) were approved by the China Food and Drug Administration for the treatment of mild and ordinary new crown pneumonia, so that the people of the world further understand the value of Chinese herbal medicine.
As a unique knowledge system of Chinese culture, the Compendium of Materia Medica and its traditional Chinese medicine not only protects the Chinese people against diseases and plagues, but also shapes the unique thinking and spirit of the Chinese.
(He Xingxing is a professor at Beijing Foreign Chinese University and director of the Evaluation Center for the Effectiveness of Chinese Culture Going Global, and Zhao Wei is a graduate student at the School of International Journalism and Communication, Beijing University of Foreign Chinese)