Li Shizhen

Also known as Zi Dongbi · Hao Binhu

Li Shizhen, courtesy name Dongbi, came from Qizhou (now Qichun, Hubei); his father Li Yanwen was a physician. A keen reader of medical books, he found that the herbals handed down from antiquity had grown to more than 1,500 entries but were full of duplication and confused names. Over thirty years he consulted works by more than eight hundred authors and rewrote his manuscript three times, producing the Compendium of Materia Medica (Bencao gangmu) in fifty-two chapters. It arranges its drugs in sixteen divisions, adds 374 new ones, and gives each a heading followed by notes on origin, appearance, properties, uses and prescriptions. He held a post as sacrificial officer in the household of the Prince of Chu. He died in 1593 before the book reached the court; his son Li Jianyuan presented it with his father's memorial, and the Wanli Emperor ordered it printed. In 2011 its Jinling edition was entered in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register.