Li Shizhen

Bust of Li Shizhen in the Qichun Herb Garden (Qizhou)

Li Shizhen ( Chinese 李時珍 / 李时珍 , Pinyin Lǐ Shízhēn , W.-G. Li Shih-chen ; also Li Binhu ; Zì : Dongbi ( 東璧 , Tung-pi ); * 1518 in Qichun , Chinese Empire ; † 1593 ) a Chinese physician, scholar, pharmacist, Ming dynasty botanist and author of an extensive medical-pharmaceutical encyclopedia, the Bencao Gangmu (Great Encyclopedia of Materia Medica) .

Life

Shizhen's grandfather was a traveling country doctor (called liying) and his father Li Yanwen was also a doctor, but at a more respected level as the author of several books (for example on ginseng, rashes and pulse diagnosis). His hometown in Qichun County in Hubei Province on the Yangtze River is still known today as a place where medicinal herbs are grown. At his father's request, Shizhen tried to take the next level of social advancement in China and took part in the strict exams for civil service as a civil servant-scholar (for which one had to have an excellent knowledge of the Confucian classics), but in which he also followed two repetitions failed. He then did an apprenticeship with his father and practiced as a doctor. When he was around 30 years old he already had a considerable reputation as a doctor, and when he cured a prince of Chu State, he was accepted into the civil service in his capital Wuchang in 1543 and was even admitted to the Imperial Medical School from 1544 to 1549 Academy employed in Beijing. But he gave up to practice again as a doctor.

Since he had access to many valuable medical books during his time in the civil service (he lists around 800 publications in his compendium) and encountered contradictions in them, he decided to write a medical compendium himself, which took him over 30 years to do rewrote the book three times (the first draft was finished in 1578, the second in 1580, the third in 1587). With the second draft, he went to Nanjing to show the book, which he had created privately without an official commission, to the then famous scholar Wang Shi Zhen, who was also Minister of Justice. Wang Shi Zhen was very impressed with the book, wrote a foreword and arranged for publication. Shizhen died before publication, which was in 1596. It was supervised by his eldest son, his grandson contributed the many illustrations.

In contrast to his predecessors, he classified the animal, herbal and mineral medicines much more precisely, indicating for what diseases and in what dose they should be used, how to prepare them, errors in previous books and much more information. 1892 substances were listed (each with a lexical entry), of which around 400 were not previously mentioned in the literature. In connection with this, he gave around 11,000 recipes. The book also provides valuable information on other parts of the knowledge of Chinese science, such as geology, mineralogy, botany, chemistry and alchemy, zoology, metallurgy, astronomy, geography. In addition to knowledge from books, he also incorporated a lot of his own experiences and knowledge gained in contact with colleagues and the population. In contrast to his predecessors in Chinese medicine, his book made not the heart but the brain the dominant human organ.

The book has around 1160 illustrations. Only 6 original copies of the 1596 edition are known (one in the Library of Congress, two in China, three in Japan, the Berlin copy was destroyed in World War II), but further editions followed (e.g. 1603 with two other works by Shizhen, most later editions followed, and an edition with better illustrations in 1640) and it has been translated into many languages and used in traditional Chinese medicine to the present day.

Shizhen wrote many other works, only two of which have survived : The Pulse Theory of Bin Hu (Bīnhú Màixué 濒湖脉学) (1564) and Studies on the Eight Extraordinary Vessels (Qíjīng Bāmài Kăo 奇经八脉考) (1572) .

The Vienna private university TCM private university Li Shi Zhen for traditional Chinese medicine was named after him.

Fonts

Chinese medicinal herbs. San Francisco 1973.
Bencao Gangmu : Compendium of Materia Medica , 6 volumes, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2003 (English translation)
- Chinese text for example Volksverlag, Beijing 1982

literature

Nathan Sivin , article in Dictionary of Scientific Biography
Li Shizhen, in Helaine Selin (Ed.), Encyclopaedia of the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine in Non-Western Cultures , Springer 2008
Wu Li: Li Shi Zhen - The distinguished naturalist in commemorandum of the 390th anniversary of his death , in: Traditional Chinese Medicine , Volume 3, Issue 4, Beijing 1983
C. Goodrich, Chaoying Fang: Dictionary of Ming Biography 1368-1644 , Volume 1, New York 1976, pp. 859-865
A. Mosig, G. Schramm: The medicinal plant and drug treasure of China and the importance of the Pen-Tsao Kang-Mu , Berlin 1955
Hong-Yen Hsu, WG Peacher: Chen's History of Chinese Medical Science , New York 1977
Paul U. Innocence : Medicine in China. A History of Pharmaceutics , University of California Press, Berkeley / Los Angeles / London 1986, pp. 145-163.
Paul U. Innocence: Li Shizhen. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 849.

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ He uses this name in his pulse theory. It means Li from near Lake Hu, his home
^ So in parts in 1656 in Latin by the Jesuit Michael Boyne, in excerpts in French by Julien Placide Hervieu in 1671, published in Paris in 1735 in a work by Jean-Baptiste Halde, which was also translated into German (1895). It was translated into Japanese in 1637 and more fully in 1783.
↑ As a partial translation in: Franz Hübotter . Chinese medicine at the beginning of the XX. Century and its historical development. Asia major, Leipzig 1929, pp. 179-191.

personal data
SURNAME	Li, Shizhen
BRIEF DESCRIPTION	Chinese scholar, doctor, botanist and pharmacist
DATE OF BIRTH	1518
PLACE OF BIRTH	Qichun
DATE OF DEATH	1593

[1] He uses this name in his pulse theory. It means Li from near Lake Hu, his home

[2] So in parts in 1656 in Latin by the Jesuit Michael Boyne, in excerpts in French by Julien Placide Hervieu in 1671, published in Paris in 1735 in a work by Jean-Baptiste Halde, which was also translated into German (1895). It was translated into Japanese in 1637 and more fully in 1783.

[3] As a partial translation in: Franz Hübotter . Chinese medicine at the beginning of the XX. Century and its historical development. Asia major, Leipzig 1929, pp. 179-191.