Li Shizhen

Li Shizhen, styled Dongbi, was a native of Qizhou during the Ming dynasty and came from a family of physicians. After failing the imperial civil service examinations, he abandoned the Confucian scholarly path to pursue medicine. Having successfully treated the heir apparent of the Chu Prince, he was recommended to serve in the Imperial Medical Bureau. Recognising numerous errors and omissions in earlier materia medica texts, Li resolved to compile a new, authoritative compendium. Over twenty-seven years, he traversed mountains and rivers, personally tasted hundreds of herbs, and consulted fishermen and herbalists across the land; he revised his manuscript three times before completing the Compendium of Materia Medica—a 1.9-million-character masterpiece cataloguing more than 1,800 medicinal substances and including over 11,000 therapeutic prescriptions. Translated into numerous languages and disseminated worldwide, the work was hailed by Charles Darwin as 'an ancient Chinese encyclopedia.' Through his unwavering commitment to empirical truth and rigorous scholarship, Li Shizhen became an immortal pillar of Chinese medical science.