李时珍出身医学世家，屡试科举不第后专心从医、遍访药材产地。他耗时近30年，参考历代本草文献800余种，结合亲身实地考察与药物试验，撰成《本草纲目》，收录药物1892种、附方逾万首，采用「析族区类，振纲分目」的科学分类法，对世界药物学、植物学、动物学均产生深远影响，被达尔文称引为「中国古代的百科全书」。

Coming from a family of physicians, Li Shizhen turned to medicine full-time after repeated failures in the imperial examinations, traveling widely to study medicinal materials at their sources. Over nearly thirty years, drawing on more than 800 earlier pharmacological texts alongside his own field investigation and experimentation, he compiled the Compendium of Materia Medica, cataloguing 1,892 substances with over ten thousand accompanying prescriptions, organized through a systematic classification method. The work profoundly influenced pharmacology, botany, and zoology worldwide and was cited by Charles Darwin as an "ancient Chinese encyclopedia."