Selected Essential Materia Medica
Ben cao pin hui jing yao ( Selected Essential Materia Medica, Evaluated and Collected ). Liu Wentai, Administrative Assistant of the Imperial Academy of Medicine, was in charge of this grand compilation by imperial order, completed in 1505. It included 1815 drug substances and 1358 realistic color illustrations by eight painters including the famous Wang Shichang. Despite the excellence of the illustrations, it had no influence on later studies. After completion it was kept in the palace and not published. In 1700 the whole set of illustrations was copied, and a few other copies survive. It was printed for the first time in 1936, but without the illustrations. Fig. 1 is a copy of the original in the National Beijing Library; Fig. 2 is a manuscript copy in the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale Vittorio Emanuele II, Rome; and Fig. 3 is a manuscript copy of the Qing Dynasty owned by the Japanese scholar 0tsuka Yasuo.