Li Shizhen was a famous medical scientist in the Ming Dynasty, and was revered as the "Medicine Sage", which can be compared with the Tang Dynasty "Medicine King" Sun Simiao. The greatest achievements of the two are in the research of "medicinal materials", which are far from the great contributions of Zhang Zhongjing, the "medical saint" in the Eastern Han Dynasty, in the diagnosis and treatment of traditional Chinese medicine, and both have made significant contributions to the development of China's pharmaceutical industry. The author believes that medicine and medicine are inseparable, and only those who know the doctor can know the medicine, and only those who know the medicine can practice medicine. In the process of practicing medicine, Li Shizhen further deepened his understanding of the analysis of medicine and wrote the pharmacological masterpiece "Compendium of Materia Medica", which benefited thousands of people in future generations.
Li Shizhen was born in a family of traditional Chinese medicine, his grandfather was a "bell doctor" who went from village to village, and his father Li Yanwen was very skilled, and he worked in the Tai Hospital (serving the upper class of the royal family and the nobility), and was a very famous doctor in Hubei. Although he is a famous doctor, Li Yanwen does not want Li Shizhenzi to inherit his father's business, because the status of Chinese medicine in the feudal era is not high, in the folk so-called "three religions and nine streams", in the "middle nine streams", ranked after Xiucai, before the painter, so Li Yanwen still wants his son to take the road of entering the shi, hoping that he will one day have a gold list title, high-ranking officials have to sit, and Guangzong Yaozu.
Li Shizhen stills
When Li Shizhen was 5 years old, he was sent to a private school by his father to study the Four Books and Five Classics, laying the foundation of Confucianism. At the age of 14, he took the child exam and passed the Xiucai examination, and the whole family was very happy and full of confidence in Li Shizhen's "official path". But I didn't expect to be happy a little earlier, Xiucai Li Shizhen in the next three township examinations, are named Sun Shan, "three tests in the township do not sell", Li Xiucai failed to become "Li Juren", away from "Li Jinshi" is even more distant. Moreover, when he participated in the second township examination, he fell seriously ill, got bone steaming disease, which is today's tuberculosis, and almost died, although he was cured later, his body became very weak.
The three times the list hit Li Shizhen very hard, coupled with poor health, he lost confidence in the scientific examination, but also lost interest, made up his mind not to take the exam again, want to follow his father to study medicine, the so-called "not for the good, then for the good doctor" well! Although Li Yanwen was unwilling, he saw that his son's idea had been decided, so he had to agree to his choice and pour out his medical skills. Li Shizhen is not in good health, the self-demand for learning to heal diseases is very strong, and he has studied hard for many years, laying a good foundation in Confucianism, laying a good foundation for him to practice medical treatment and engage in pharmaceutical research, after all, Chinese medicine is also part of Sinology in some ways. Under the careful guidance of his father, Li Shizhen looked at and asked more questions, studied hard, strengthened the practice of medicine, and soon grew into a very famous Confucian doctor.
With fame, naturally someone will look for it. The grandson of Zhu Houkun, the king of Fushun who lived in Jingzhou, contracted a strange disease: as soon as he smelled the smell of lantern flowers (the flower shape formed by the embers of the wick), he clamored to eat, and if he didn't let him eat, he cried endlessly. The author feels that this symptom seems to be a bit similar to the smell of gasoline that some people like to smell now, and I don't know if it is a problem. The palace found a lot of doctors to see Wang Sun's illness, but they couldn't figure out what the disease was, and Princess Wang Ye was in a hurry. Later, someone recommended Li Shizhen, who after some hope and inquiry, quickly diagnosed that Wang Sun suffered from "insect fetish", immediately prescribed medicine for Wang Sun to take, and the result was that the medicine was eliminated, and Wang Sun's "strange disease" was quickly cured.
At this time, Li Shizhen's fame was even greater, and there was an endless stream of people looking for him to see a doctor. One day, the son of Zhu Yingliao, the king of Chu, suddenly fainted and unconscious, and Li Shizhen was invited to rescue him. He carefully diagnosed and treated the disease, and Zhu Yingliao was very grateful to him, so he hired him as a "Fengci Zheng" (正八品, in charge of sacrifice) and also in charge of the medical care of the royal palace. Soon, the Beijing Tai Hospital was short of people, and the imperial court ordered the selection of a group of experienced doctors throughout the country. At the recommendation of Zhu Yingliao, 42-year-old Li Shizhen came to Beijing and became a royal doctor at Tai Hospital. However, soon after he took office, he changed from spirited to depressed, because the emperor at that time was the Jiajing Emperor, obsessed with alchemy, eating Dan, cultivating immortals, and immortality. In order to meet his needs, the Tai Hospital collected the so-called "Immortal Formula" everywhere and refined the elixir of immortality for the emperor.
Stills of the Jiajing Emperor
Most of the "medicinal materials" selected by these "immortal formulas" contain arsenic, mercury, lead tin, male yellow, cinnabar and other substances, which cannot last for a long time, but will only harm the body. Li Shizhen consulted a large number of materials and vigorously refuted this practice according to what he had learned. But others spoke softly, and when they met a stubborn emperor, his opinions were naturally not taken seriously. In addition to disappointment, he put his main energy into studying the stack of medical books of Tai Hospital, and made full use of the rich medicinal resources in Tai Hospital, constantly comparing and researching, and further deepening his understanding of herbal medicines. After working in the Tai Hospital for less than a year, Li Shizhen made a resignation report, gave up his status as a royal doctor, and returned to his hometown from Beijing, Puzhou, Hubei Province.
After returning to his hometown, Li Shizhen systematically sorted out his diagnostic experience in addition to practicing medicine, successively published the "Endangered Lake Pulse Science" and the "Qijing Eight Pulse Examination", and began the compilation of the "Compendium of Materia Medica". In the process of compilation, Li Shizhen encountered a great difficulty, that is, the cognition of the same drug, the previous generation of doctors have different or even contradictory statements. For example, "Yuanzhi", a medicinal herb that calms the gods and nootropics, Tao Hongjing, a famous medicinal scientist of the Southern and Northern Dynasties, said that it was a small grass, like ephedra, but the color was blue and bloomed white flowers; while Ma Zhi of the Song Dynasty said that it was like Daqing, and blamed Tao Hongjing for not knowing Yuanzhi at all. There are many similar situations, the reason is that some authors do not conduct research, but just copy and copy in the books, resulting in a mixture of drug names, making it difficult to understand the shape and growth of medicinal materials.
Herbs are not anything else, and if you eat them wrong, you will die. In order to benefit Cangsheng, Li Shizhen was determined to "read thousands of books and travel thousands of miles", personally went to various places to investigate, study, and compare, and find out the true appearance and efficacy of each medicinal herb. So, like an ascetic monk, he began a series of arduous treks, barren mountains, cliffs, uncertain places, wind and food, and the place where there were medicinal herbs, which was the world he explored. In order to find out the curative effect of the medicinal herbs, he tasted many kinds of medicinal plants like Shennong's taste of hundreds of herbs, and tried the "effect" by himself. Once, while tasting mandala flowers with an anesthetic effect, he was so anesthetized that he almost fainted. After waking up, he wrote down his personal feelings of "cutting sores and moxibustion, it is advisable to take this first, then you will not feel bitter".
From 1552 to 1578, Li Shizhen spent 26 years traveling all over the country, tasting countless plant herbs, and consulting more than 800 kinds of books, and finally completed the "Compendium of Materia Medica", a great pharmaceutical work in Chinese history. The Compendium of Materia Medica consists of 16 volumes, 52 volumes, 1.92 million words, records 1,892 kinds of drugs, describes in detail the shapes, characteristics, and indications of these drugs, and is all accompanied by hand-drawn illustrations, in addition to more than 430,000 effective prescriptions. Li Shizhen's apprentice Pang Xian accompanied him everywhere to investigate and study together, four sons corrected the manuscript, four grandsons helped copy it, and the second son Li Jianyuan carefully drew more than 1,000 exquisite illustrations for the book.
It may be due to the short-sightedness of the booksellers at that time, who felt that the profit was not large and did not want to print it; or it may be that they were waiting for the literary giants Wang Shizhen to write the preface (the manuscript was placed in Wang Shizhen for 10 years) to increase the popularity of the book. In 1593, Li Shizhen died. Three years later, with the preface written by Wang Shizhen, the Compendium of Materia Medica was finally published, and at this time, 18 years had passed since the Compendium of Materia Medica was written. This book is the first in the world to create a system of classification according to the natural properties of drugs, known as the "Great Classic of Oriental Medicine", which has had a profound impact on the development of medicine, botany, zoology, mineralogy and chemistry in the world.
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