Collections of traditional Chinese medical literature as resources for systematic searches.

OBJECTIVES

This review evaluates and compares published collections of the traditional literature on Traditional Chinese Medicine in terms of their scope and utility as resources for systematic searches for information of relevance to traditional evidence, clinical research, and drug discovery.

METHODS

Published collections of books and compilation works that contain substantial samples of traditional literature on Chinese herbal medicine were located via internet, library, and bookshop searches. These sources were compared in terms of scope, size, content, and ease of searching.

RESULTS

The fourteen included collections varied considerably in scope, format, probity of included material, and accessibility. The largest was Zhong Guo Ben Cao Quan Shu (The Complete Collection of Traditional Texts on Chinese Materia Medica), with 2027 titles; followed by Zhong Hua Yi Dian (Encyclopaedia of Traditional Chinese Medicine), a compact disc (CD) of 1000 full books; and Zhong Yi Fang Ji Da Ci Dian (Great Compendium of Chinese Medical Formulas), which includes extracts derived from 680 books. Zhong Yi Fang Ji Da Ci Dian is an edited collection that is highly accessible because it is well-indexed with respect to herbal formulas and disorders. The most accessible of the large full-text collections is the Zhong Hua Yi Dian CD, which allows electronic searches. However, neither collection provides detailed bibliographic information on their included books. A collection that combines convenient search options with high quality bibliographic data is Si Ku Yi Xue Cong Shu (The Four Treasuries of Medical Works), but having only 104 titles, this is one of the smaller collections.

CONCLUSIONS

A two-stage process for systematic searches is suggested. Large indexed compendia such as Zhong Yi Fang Ji Da Ci Dian or electronic resources such as Zhong Hua Yi Dian can be used to locate citations, and this can be followed by crossreferencing to authenticated editions of the books to verify the retrieved information.