Encyclopedia of Traditional Chinese Medicines

How to Use the Books1. Three Kinds of “Many to Many” RelationshipsTo help readers effectively search and use of the books, authors strongly suggestreaders being familiar with the structure of the encyclopedia and certain importantlinkers or pointers between different data sets.Firstly, in order to avoid confusing cases, please keep in mind the following threefeatures of the book:(a) In the encyclopedia, all of pharmacological data belong to compounds, not toplants. In other words, the encyclopedia doesn’t include plants’ pharmacological data.(b) All effect and indication terms belong to TCM plants, not to compounds. Andalmost all of effect terms as well as 85% indication terms are pure Chinese traditionalconcepts.(c) In the encyclopedia, there are three kinds of “many to many” relationships: (i),compounds to plants, which is the most important relationship. (ii), pharmacologicaldata to compounds in the molecular level only. (iii), plants to effects/indications in thespecies level.Pharm. data ↔ Compound 1Pharm. data ↔ Compound 2Plant T0001 ↔ effects, indicationsPlant T0002 ↔ effects, indicationsPharm. data ↔ Compound 3 ↔ Plant T0003 ↔ effects, indications…………..………….Pharm. data ↔ Compound 23032Pharm. data ↔ Compound 23033(Molecular level)Plant T6925 ↔ effects, indicationsPlant T6926 ↔ effects, indications(Species level)Sketch Map of Three Important “Many to Many” Relationships2. Seven Useful IndexesIn Volume 6, there are seven indexes for data searching.The indexes 1-3 are tools to search compounds from different starting-points:Index 1 (Compound Pharmacological Activity Index) links pharmacological termsxix