Ming Pharmacopoeia

Summary of the novel "Da Ming Pharmacopoeia" A pharmacopoeia, two generations of emperors, three life and death bets. In the 16th year of Hongzhi's reign, Liu Wentai was demoted to the rank of junior medical officer due to a medication error. Late at night, a secret edict called him back to the palace - Zhu Youtang, the frail and sick Emperor Xiaozong of the Ming Dynasty, asked him to rebuild the pharmacopoeia of the world with the purpose of "not avoiding the people, not poisons, and not foreign prescriptions". This was the last official Materia Medica of the Ming Dynasty, and it was also Liu Wentai's only chance to atone for his sins. He recruited Wang Lun, a wandering doctor, and Lu Jin, an arrogant and serious painter. The three of them went deep into the miasma of Yunnan and Guizhou, the snowfields of Liaodong, and the streets of Jiangnan, and exchanged their lives for the authenticity of every medicinal ingredient. However, the Pharmacopoeia has not yet been written, and it has already touched the interests of the royal pharmacists, eunuchs in the palace and even the heirs to the throne. Tampering, poisoning, burning manuscripts, framing - the enemies in the dark are closing in step by step. What's even more fatal is that the emperor's health is getting worse day by day. Some people hope that the emperor will die soon, while others hope that the pharmacopoeia will never see the light of day. Liu Wentai must make inevitable choices again and again between poison and antidote, conscience and power, survival and martyrdom. On a thunderstorm night in the 18th year of Hongzhi's reign, the emperor suddenly died and all the manuscripts were ordered to be burned. A eunuch in charge, a blind painter, and a reclusive doctor used their own methods to bury the seeds of this pharmacopoeia in the last cracks of the Ming Dynasty. Fifty years later, in a thatched cottage in Qizhou, Li Shizhen opened the yellowed manuscript.