This book is abbreviated as Tang Bencao, also known as Yinggong Materia Medica, and is the first national pharmacopoeia. In the second year of Tang Xianqing (657), Su Jing-zou requested the compilation of a materia medica, and the Tang government then ordered Su Jing and 22 others to compile it. The entire compilation task was completed on the seventeenth day of the first month of the fourth year of Xianqing (659). The entire book consists of 54 volumes, divided into three parts. Main Text, commonly referred to as Xinxiu Bencao, comprises 20 volumes, with 1 volume of table of contents; 25 volumes of drug illustrations, with 1 volume of table of contents; and Illustrated Classics, 7 volumes. After the book was completed, it was promulgated nationwide by the Tang government as the basis for medicinal use and circulated for over 400 years.

In the book, the drug illustrations of 7 volumes were already lost by the Northern Song Dynasty. The Illustrated Classics section has also been lost for a long time, but some of its contents are preserved in Shu Bencao fragments and Qianjin Yifang. Although the original main text is lost, the text has been largely preserved through citations in various materia medica over the ages. In recent years, scholars from China and Japan have done much work in compiling fragments and textual research. A relatively complete compilation is the Recompiled Xinxiu Bencao by Japanese scholar Okanishi. Shang Zhijun's Tang?Xinxiu Bencao

compilation was published by Anhui Science and Technology Publishing House in 1981. The main text of Xinxiu Bencao includes prefaces and 850 kinds of drugs, adding 114 new drugs compared to Tao Hong-jing's Bencao Jing Jizhu, categorized into nine classes: jade and stones, herbs, trees, birds and beasts, insects and fish, fruits, vegetables, grains, and those with names but no use. It introduces the taste, nature, toxicity, indications, usage, aliases, and origins of the drugs, with brief descriptions of their forms in small characters. It supplements content not recorded in ancient books and revises errors, holding high academic value. The drug illustrations were compiled from colored drawings of crude drugs made in various regions, making it the most voluminous and richly sourced colored drug atlas before the Tang Dynasty in China. The Illustrated Classics are the textual explanations of the drug illustrations, introducing the forms, origins, and collection of drugs to distinguish similarities and differences. Xinxiu Bencao has earned the respect of medical practitioners both in China and abroad for its extensive drug research and rich pharmaceutical knowledge, and has had a profound impact on the development of pharmacology in later generations.