Chronicles of formulae and set prescriptions in the past dynasties / 中华医学图书情报杂志

ABSTRACT

Objective To study the distribution of chronicles in formulae and set prescriptions and its reasons ac-cording to their source information.Methods After a standard table of formulae and set prescriptions sources was es-tablished according to the data of documented formulae and set prescriptions, their similarity was sequenced by measuring the edit distance using the string similarity algorithm. After it was checked, the chronicles of formulae and set prescriptions were calculated according to their documented first publication year.Results The emergence and development of formulae and set prescriptions were related with the laws of social stability and wars. The calcu-lated chronicles of formulae and set prescriptions were reliable.Conclusion Sequencing the similarity of formulae and set prescriptions can determine their emergence time, which is thus of great significance for calculating their dosages and may become supplementary method for abstracting information from the formulae and set prescriptions in the past dynasties.