Drugs of the Tang Dynasty preserved in the Shosoin
Recorded in Shds6in yakubutsu (The Shosoin Medicinals published by the Botanical Literature Publishing Society,Osaka,Japan,in 1 955.
A large number of items that had belonged to the 8th-century Emperor Sh6mu were donated by his Empress Dowager to the Sh6s6in,originally the storehouse of the Todaiji temple in Nara.These included some 60 kinds of materia medica,mostly imported from China.For more than a millennium,these drugs have been preserved intact. They include " five-colored dragon's teeth, " polygala root, cinnamon, ginseng root, rhubarb root and rhizome, and realgar. (By courtesy of Botanical Literature Publishing Society.)