 Famous medical scientist of Ming dynasty. He was born into a family knowledgeable of traditional Chinese medicine. When he was 14 years old, he became a scholar but later chose medicine over books. Li Shizhen entered the palace as an imperial physician in 1556. During his stay, he collected plenty of information and went on to investigate plants and other things growing in every place he could get topersonally. These investigations were compiled into the famous book, Compendium of Materia Medica, a masterpiece of pharmacology of the Ming Dynasty. It had 1,900,000 words, recorded 1892 kinds of medicine, 11,094 prescriptions, treating methods of 177 common diseases, and 1160 figure
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