Dictionary of the Ben cao gang mu, Volume 1

The dictionary of the Ben cao gang mu, was 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. It is the largest encyclopaedia of natural history in a long tradition of Chinese materia medica works.
The books describe almost 1,900 pharmaceutically used natural and man-made substances marks the apex of the development of premodern Chinese pharmaceutical knowledge.
Ben cao gang mu: 16th Century Chinese Encyclopedia of Materia Medica and Natural History