Talk:Bencao Gangmu

Change title?
Should the title be moved to "Bencao Gangmu" for consistency with other Chinese texts? Translations besides "Compendium of Materia Medica" include "The Great Pharmacopeia" (Joseph Needham), "The Great Herbal", etc. Keahapana 23:06, 24 December 2006 (UTC)
 * No. Per WP:USEENGLISH & WP:COMMONNAME, we should use the normal English name for this particular work. — Llywelyn II   09:33, 8 November 2013 (UTC)

Another collection of monographes.....???
--222.67.211.208 (talk) 11:46, 2 March 2010 (UTC)
 * http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19824365

Darwin misquote
Since the lead had two "citation needed" tags, I looked up the quote, and found it's mistaken. "Charles Darwin (1809-1882) once quoted the explanation of color formation of goldfish in The Compendium of Materia Medica to illustrate the phenomenon of the artificial selection of animals in his work The Origins of Mankind. The Compendium of Materia Medica was called 'the encyclopedia of ancient China' by Darwin thanks to its special contributions to the world's pharmacy, pharmacology, botany, and biology." Checking the Delphi Complete Works of Charles Darwin, he cites secondhand information from the Bencao gangmu several times, referring to Samuel Birch. "Mr. Birch, of the British Museum, has translated for me passages of a Chinese Encyclopaedia published in 1609, but compiled from more ancient documents." He refers "an ancient Chinese Encyclopaedia / encyclopaedia " (3 times), "the Chinese Encyclopaedia published in 1596", "the ancient Chinese Encyclopaedia", "a Chinese encyclopaedia", and "the old Chinese Encyclopaedia". He neither says "the encyclopedia of ancient China" nor "thanks to its special contributions to the world's …". The Bencao gangmu is classified as a Chinese materia medica or pharmacopeia, but not an encyclopedia, in the Western sense of the word. Neither is it considered a leishu Chinese "encyclopedia". I deleted the misquote and added better ones from Joseph Needham. Keahapana (talk) 23:39, 12 July 2016 (UTC)
 * Probably The Origins of Mankind is an error for either On the Origin of Species or The Descent of Man. Should not be the lead, but tantalizing. Vagabond nanoda (talk) 17:19, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

Pangolin scales
I added a brief explanation of given in the Bencao Gangmu for why pangolin scales are believed to be efficacious in TCM. Given the inconvenience of the present quarantine, perhaps we are owed an explanation for the bat-pangolin-human link (if true), and others may have more time to build this us (I think it deserves its own article). Vagabond nanoda (talk) 03:34, 27 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Should we mention other products of (now) endangered species, too, that are mentioned in the Bencao Gangmu, like rhinoceros horn, tiger bones, and sturgeons? Or in Chinese herbology?