Table of Contents (first half-folio) from Fenbu bencao miaoyong (Wonder-working Categorised Pharmacopoeia), a specialist treatise on the materia medica published in 1630 (3rd year of the Chongzhen reign period of the Ming dynasty). This work runs to ten volumes (juan) and contains entries on 560 medicinal substances. The first five volumes deal separately with medications for the five zang viscera (i.e. the liver, the heart, the spleen, the lungs and the kidney); volumes six and seven contain sections on the channels; volume eight is concerned with 'miscellaneous drugs' (zayao); volume nine consists of three sections -- on grains (gu), vegetables (cai) and fruits (guo); and volume ten consists of six sections -- on beasts (shou), fowl (qin) and creatures with scales (lin), water, fire and earth. The section on the five viscera and the latter part of the section on the channels further categorise drugs under the rubrics of 'Warming and supplementing' (wenbu), 'Cooling and supplementing' (hanbu), 'Warming and purging' (wenxie), 'Cooling and purging' (hanxie), and 'Neutral in character' (xing ping).
