Compendium of Materia Medica is not a good book for learning Chinese medicine. It's just a systematic book about the medicinal properties of traditional Chinese medicine. For beginners, reading it can only make them more confused.

If you want to study systematically, I suggest you start with the basics of traditional Chinese medicine, then go to Su Wen in Huangdi Neijing, Ling Shu in Huangdi Neijing, Acupuncture and Moxibustion, and read some books on traditional Chinese medicine, such as Compendium of Materia Medica.

If you just want to know about TCM health, you can buy a copy of TCM health.

But strictly speaking, the theory and knowledge of TCM health preservation are greater than the knowledge system of TCM.

TCM health care covers almost all TCM theories and knowledge. TCM health preservation is a broad sense of TCM. It can be said that TCM health care = TCM health care in a narrow sense.