The Compendium of Materia Medica is a Chinese herbology volume written during the Ming dynasty. Its first draft was completed in 1578 and printed in Nanjing in 1596. The Compendium lists the materia medica of traditional Chinese medicine known at the time, including plants, animals, and minerals that were believed to have medicinal properties. The text is attributed to Li Shizhen and contains several factual errors. He reasoned that a poem might have better value that a medical work and that a tale of the strange could illustrate a drug's effects.