Abstract
Geum Ryeo Hwan(錦儷丸) is Chinese patent medicine which has been used for women's diseases and climacteric syndrome in Korea. It consists of 12 kinds of powdered crude drugs. In powdered crude drugs, it is hard to identify each component by chemical analysis or morphological examination. However, the method of identification of powdered crude drugs has not been clearly established. Therefore, it is of interest to establish the microscopic method for identification of powdered crude drugs of Chinese patent medicines. The effectiveness of microscopic method is exemplified by the identification of tissue and contents of crude drugs by comparison with standard drugs. Moreover, this method has advantage as a microscale analysis, since it requires only a small amount of specimens. In this study, it is demonstrated that the microscopic method is very effective for the identification of 12 crude drug ingredients in Geum Ryeo Hwan.
