Abstract
Dae Jeong Hwan (大精丸) is a Chinese patent medicine which has been used for improvement of lassitude, anorexia, and enervation in Korea. It consists of 24 kinds of powdered crude drugs. In powered 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. For the identification of individual crude drugs in such powdery mixtures, microscopic method may advantageously be used, as it requires only small amount of specimens. In this study, it is demonstrated that the microscopic method is very effective for the identification of 24 crude drug ingredients in Dae Jeong Hwan.