ABSTRACT
Throughout history, the most important and widely used method of treatment in Chinese medicine was drug therapy as evident in the amount and variety of extant pharmacological literature. This chapter delineates the development of this literature, including materia medica collections (bencao 本草) and formularies (fangshu 方書), from its earliest and eclectic forms to its standardised form that began the integration with canonical doctrines of the Song dynasty (960–1276). Following a brief discussion concerning basic Chinese drug therapy terminology, the three stages of development of this literature are outlined. The first stage was the formative era, when the earliest texts on drug therapy were authored dating to the third century BCE to third century CE. The second stage was from the fourth to the tenth centuries, in which drug therapy literature expanded and became systematised knowledge. Lastly, the third stage, which lasted from the tenth to the thirteenth centuries, was when drugs and formulæ were standardised and drug nomenclature was integrated with the doctrines of canonical medicine.
