ABSTRACT
Following the Chinese-led global standardization of Chinese medicine, the 9 th edition of the European Pharmacopoeia, published in 2016, listed 66 kinds of crude drugs that are used in traditional Chinese medicine. By the spread of dietary supplements in the United States, the number of herbal medicines listed in United States Pharmacopoeia is tended to be increasing. In this article, we compare the names and origins of crude drugs listed in the European and American Pharmacopoeias and used in ethical Kampo extract formulation with those described in the pharmacopoeias of Japan, China, Taiwan, and South Korea. There were 4 crude drugs that had the same origins and names in the pharmacopoeia of these 6 countries, but only Coix Seed had the same English name. The pharmacopoeia of the 5 countries except the United States had 19 crude drugs with the same origin, but only Platycodon Root and Eucommia Bark had the same English and Latin names. For other crude drugs, the names and origins in the pharmacopoeia of each country were different. When scientists in each country disseminate the information about crude drugs used in their own countries to the world, it is necessary for them to describe the original plant scientific names and their medicinal parts that are unified by International Code of Nomenclature for plants instead of English or Latin names of crude drugs.