Li Shizhen
A Ming dynasty scholar whose 27-year odyssey through mountains and medical texts produced an encyclopedia that defined Chinese pharmacy for centuries.
1518–1593 (age 75)·Chinese polymath and scientist·Birthday: July 3
Biography
Li Shizhen was born into a family of doctors in Hubei province, but his father, a low-ranking physician, initially pushed him toward the imperial bureaucracy. After failing the civil service exams, Li turned to medicine, where his brilliant, inquisitive mind found its true calling. Frustrated by errors and gaps in existing medical texts, he embarked on an epic project: to catalog and correct all known medicinal substances. For decades, he traveled across China, collecting specimens, interviewing farmers, miners, and fishermen, and testing remedies himself. The result was the 'Bencao Gangmu' (Compendium of Materia Medica), a staggering 52-volume work describing nearly 1,900 substances, over 1,000 illustrations, and some 11,000 prescriptions. More than a simple list, it was a systematic work of natural history, organizing plants, animals, and minerals with a logic that was revolutionary for its time. Li Shizhen died before seeing his masterpiece published, but it became a cornerstone of East Asian medicine and a testament to empirical, hands-on scientific inquiry.
#1 When Li Was Born
The biggest hits of 1518
Li's Life & Times
The world at every milestone
1518Born
1523Started school
1531Became a teenager
1534Could drive
1536Could vote
1539Turned 21
1548Turned 30
1558Turned 40
1568Turned 50
1578Turned 60
1588Turned 70
1593Died at 75
Key Achievements
- Authored the 'Compendium of Materia Medica' (Bencao Gangmu), a foundational text of Chinese medicine and pharmacology completed after 27 years of research.
- Systematically categorized 1,892 medicinal substances, correcting numerous errors from previous historical herbals.
- Included detailed entries on substances previously ignored by the scholarly medical tradition, including many from folk practice.
- His work influenced not only medicine but also botany, zoology, and mineralogy in China for generations.
Did You Know?
The original manuscript for the 'Bencao Gangmu' was over 2 million Chinese characters long.
He often tested the effects of herbs and compounds on himself, a potentially dangerous practice.
Despite its later fame, the book was not published until three years after his death.
A crater on the planet Mercury is named in his honor.
“To study the phenomena of disease without books is to sail an uncharted sea, while to study books without patients is not to go to sea at all.”
