Abstract
THE fact that this book, which gives the maximum of information in the minimum of space and therefore appeals only to experts, should have reached a third edition, is a striking testimony to the interest now being shown in the chemistry of plants. It is also a tribute to the learned author's success in accomplishing the remarkable literary and scientific feat of transmuting medieval Chinese materia medica into this thoroughly modern treatise on the medicinal plants of China. The data he has accumulated as a result of his labours are set out in tables giving the kind of information usually provided in books on materia medica, namely, botanical family, specific name, habitat, principal constituents, etc., but with the unusual addition of a bibliography of the chemical, medical and pharmacological literature of each drug.
Chinese Medicinal Plants from the Pen Ts'ao Kang Mu, A.D. 1596
Third edition of a Botanical, Chemical and Pharmacological Reference List. Compiled by Dr. Bernard E. Read. (Published by the Peking Natural History Bulletin, 1936.) Pp. xvi + 389. (Peiping: The French Bookstore, 1936.) 6 dollars.
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H., T. Chinese Medicinal Plants from the Pen Ts'ao Kang Mu, AD 1596. Nature 138, 484 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/138484a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/138484a0