Study on sociocultural history of therapeutic efficacy and processing of Chinese materia medica

Abstract

The historical evolving examples of the confirmation of therapeutic efficacy of some Chinese materia medica, the social fashion of using medicine, and the processing methods of Chinese materia medica indicate that the social trend of thoughts, customs and economic factors in different ages affected the various aspects of Chinese materia medica. So, Chinese materia medica possesses very outstanding social and cultural features. Not all the actions of Chinese materia medica recorded came from the experiences of doctors. The understanding level to the nature in different ages decides what kind of drugs they would accept. There are three kinds of drug processing in ancient times: effective medicinal processing, fantastic Taoist processing and invalid trading processing. Based on the study of sociocultural history of therapeutic efficacy and processing of Chinese materia medica. It is crucial that the history and medical literature research on Chinese materia medica and pharmacy should be raised to the position as important as clinical and experiment researches.