A giant materia medica, describes more than two thousand drugs and presents directions for preparing more than eight thousand prescriptions.

Completed in 1578 by Li Shih-chen, the Pen-ts'ao kang-mu (“Great Pharmacopoeia”) is in part a compilation of other smaller works of the same kind.

It contains one hundred and forty-two illustrations and descriptions of one thousand and seventy-four vegetable, four hundred and forty-three animal, and two hundred and seventeen mineral substances.

Li describes such seemingly modern processes as distillation and the uses of mercury, ephedrine, chaulmoogra oil, iodine, and even smallpox inoculation.