The Bencao gangmu, known in English as the Compendium of Materia Medica or Great Pharmacopoeia, is an encyclopedic gathering of medicine, natural history, and Chinese herbology compiled and edited by
Ono Ranzan
…Ono Mototaka, and first published in 1803–1806. It was a piece on natural history espousing viewpoints independent from China's Honzō Kōmoku (the Bencao Gangmu). Despite Ono's knowledge of Western and Chinese botany, this was one of the first books in the Japanese natural sciences to advocate experimentation…