Shennong Tastes the Hundred Herbs

The Father of Medicine

With his red whip Shennong tested every herb's nature and personally tasted each — encountering seventy poisons in one day — founding Chinese medicine.

Huainanzi records: "Shennong tasted the flavor of every herb and the sweetness and bitterness of every spring, so that the people might know what to avoid. In those days he met seventy poisons in a single day." Sou Shen Ji adds that with his red whip he struck each plant to learn its qualities, hot or cold, poisonous or safe. He is honored as the father of Chinese medicine — even as legend says he died from a poison beyond cure.