Compendium of Materia Medica consists of 52 volumes, including 1892 kinds of drugs, including 374 kinds of new drugs, and collected prescriptions 1 1096 pieces. The book also draws 1 1 1 beautiful illustrations. Each drug is divided into the following items: description (determination of name), centralized description (description of place of origin), right and wrong (correction of mistakes in past literature), treatment (processing method), odor, indication, invention (the first three items refer to analysis of drug's function), and attached prescription (folk prescription collection). Plant medicine 88 1 species, appendix 6 1 species, * * 942 species, named unused plants 153 species, accounting for 58% of all drugs.
In Li Shizhen, plants are divided into five categories: grass, valley, vegetable, fruit and headquarters, and grass is divided into nine categories: mountain grass, vanilla, wet grass, poisonous grass, creeping weed, aquatic weed, stony grass, Carex and weed, which is a precious heritage in China's medical treasure house.