A Catalog of Benevolent Items: Li Shizhen's Compendium of Classical Chinese Knowledge

By: Li Shizhen

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Synopsis: Distills ten volumes, four dictionaries, and 1,800 years of knowledge into an authoritative introduction to the Ben cao gang mu. The Ben cao gang mu was the world’s most comprehensive encyclopedia of natural history and medicine when it was published in China in 1593. In fifty-two chapters, the physician Li Shizhen recorded two millennia of medical observations, interpreting the wide-ranging uses of plants, animals, minerals, and artificial substances and including countless verbatim quotations along with his own evaluations. Edited and translated by Paul U. Unschuld, A Catalog of Benevolent Items provides thoughtfully curated selections from the Ben cao gang mu, organized by theme. This anthology offers little-known details of China’s historical knowledge of nature; traditional Chinese medicine and its theoretical foundations; social and cultural facets of ancient Chinese civilization not documented elsewhere; and the information management of a sixteenth-century Chinese scholar.

Book Quality:: Publisher Quality
Book Size:: 410 Pages
ISBN-13:: 9780520404250
Related ISBNs:: 9780520404236, 9780520404243
Publisher:: University of California Press
Date of Addition:: 10/01/24
Copyrighted By:: Paul U. Unschuld
Adult content:: No
Language:: English
Has Image Descriptions:: No
Categories:: History, Nonfiction, Health, Mind and Body, Literature and Fiction, Medicine
Submitted By:: Bookshare Staff
Usage Restrictions:: This is a copyrighted book.