Investigation On Citations Of Supplement To The Compendium Of Materia Medica

The book Supplements to Compendium of Materia Medica is an important comprehensive traditional Chinese works on herbal medicine in Qing dynasty. In order to supplement the insufficiency of another famous works Compendium of Materia Medica, the author cites lots of medical materials from books all over the traditional Chinese herbal books, the traditional medical books and local chronicles which were written later than the Compendium of Materia Medica. Therefore, Supplements to Compendium of Materia Medica is a summary of Chinese medical contents in the Ming and Qing Dynasty, boosting very high value in both pharmacology and literature.Supplements to Compendium of Materia Medica has about 340 thousand Chinese characters, and quotations about 600 kinds of references, including amount of books, persons’name and prescriptions. Among these quotations, the books were 491 kinds, of a total of about 40000 Chinese characters, accounting for 41.18%. Most of these cited books were medical books composed by the doctors who lived in Ming or Qing dynasty, along with some chorography, journal, and novels. But it is a pity that we found many confused quotations in Supplements to Compendium of Materia Medica, such as one book were cited as two or more different names, which brings a lot difficulties for the readers.Therefore, this article will take the study on to the quotations in Supplements to Compendium of Materia Medica, with the methods of history tracing from the literature perspective and statistical methods. The ultimate goal is to clarify the complex quotations, to compose a index, and to investigate the value of this book.The first part of this article is an introduction to the author and general knowledge of the book. First of all, the family background of the author ZHAO Xue-min and works wirttern by the author are introduced. Then the background of how the book was written, the circulated editions of the book and the medicine knowledge and citations in the book were introduced.The second part is about the classification of citations, along with the introduction to them. According to the statistics, the number of the cited books is 491 kinds, which include medical books, local records, novels, books on agriculture, history, Taoism and Confucian, etc. The Chinese herbal books account for the largest proportion, followed by medical books, local records, books on miscellaneous learnings and novels. Other kinds of quotations only take a very small proportion.The third part is the analysis of the bibliography characteristics based on area and times. According to the research, most of the traditional Chinese herbal and medical quotations were composed in Ming and Qing dynasty; the traditional Chinese herbal and medical quotations were mainly come from JiangSu and ZheJiang provincial area; and the local record focused in the southeast coast area of China.The fourth part summarizes the various changes of the titles in Supplements to Compendium of Materia Medica. According to the statistics, there are 150 books had their title changed, most of which are herbal books, medical books, chorography and books on miscellaneous learning. And four different type of changing the title of book name are found:First:Attaches the name, zi, hao or even the native place of the author in the title; Second:use the name of the author to supplement the name of the book; Third:Incorporate the chapter name to the book name; Fourth:use the chapter name to supplement the book name. There are five aspects of the reasons for the title changes:own factors of the titles, subjective factors of the authors, quoting factors, objective factors and historical factors.The fifth part is textual research for the titles of books in Supplements to Compendium of Materia Medica. The cited titles which is typical and easy to be confused in these book were analyzed in detailed.The sixth part summarizes the article generally. Firstly it summarizes all chapters; secondly it discusses the philological, medical and historical values of the cited books in Supplements to Compendium of Materia Medica; and at last the study clarifies some chaotic problems in titles of the cited books, although there are still some questioning titles remained to be researched.