The Study of Microscopical Identification of Powdered Chinese Drugs Ⅰ.

The Chinese traditional pharmaceutical preparations such as pills, powders and pastilles are made chiefly of various powdered crude drugs, most of them usually consist of several to about fifty or more different ingredients. One of the scientific methods to identifying these preparations is microscopical observation. The most important one for the identification of these preparations is to study at first the microcharacteristics of each powdered ingredient. Therefore, the crude drugs as chief ingredients of pills, powders and pastilles recorded in the Chinese Pharmacopeia part Ⅰ(1963) were selected and carefully studied. This paper deals with the descriptions and illustrations of microcharacteristics of 70 species of powdered drugs which will be continuously published in several issues.