Zheng Jin-Sheng
China Institute for History of Medicine and Medical Literature, China Academy of Chinese medical Sciences, Beijing 100700, China.
Zhonghua Yi Shi Za Zhi. 2006 Oct;36(4):197-200.
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.
一些中药治疗效果的确证、用药社会风尚以及中药炮制方法的历史演变实例表明，不同时代的社会思潮、习俗和经济因素影响着中药的各个方面。所以，中药具有非常突出的社会和文化特征。并非所有记载的中药功效都来自医生的经验。不同时代对自然的认识水平决定了他们会接受什么样的药物。古代有三种药物加工方式：有效药物加工、神奇的道家加工和无效交易加工。基于对中药治疗效果和炮制的社会文化史研究。将中药和药学的历史及医学文献研究提升到与临床和实验研究同等重要的地位至关重要。
