Tao Hongjing is one of the greatest early contributors in the history of Chinese medicine. There are more than 10 herbal works in his life, but there is no unified standard. Especially the ancient cursive script, because of its long invalidation time, scattered content, no distinction between grass and stone, no distinction between insects and animals, it is not convenient for clinical application.

Tao Hongjing shouldered the heavy responsibility of "unifying classics and researching interests", and sorted all the herbal works at that time into Shen Nong's Herbal Classics and Famous Doctors' Bielu respectively, and then merged them into one. Combined with his own personal experience in this field, he wrote Notes on Materia Medica, collected 730 kinds of drugs, and created the classification method of drugs that is still in use today, taking jade and vegetation as the first case.

Extended data:

Tao Hongjing loves medicine very much. He has read many books, but he is not limited to the comments in them. He personally went to nature to look for drugs and confirmed the contents of the book with practical observation. In medicine, his greatest contribution is to compile the first pharmaceutical work "Notes on Herbal Classics" after Shennong's Herbal Classics. This book has reached a new level than the classic in terms of description content, quantity of drugs contained and classification method.

References:

Baidu Encyclopedia-Tao Hongjing