section_path: Scholarly achievements/Pharmacology
section_name: Pharmacology
paragraph_text: Pharmacology
  
  For pharmacology, Shen wrote of the difficulties of adequate diagnosis and therapy, as well as the proper selection, preparation, and administration of drugs. He held great concern for detail and philological accuracy in identification, use and cultivation of different types of medicinal herbs, such as in which months medicinal plants should be gathered, their exact ripening times, which parts should be used for therapy; for domesticated herbs he wrote about planting times, fertilization, and other matters of horticulture. In the realms of botany, zoology, and mineralogy, Shen Kuo documented and systematically described hundreds of different plants, agricultural crops, rare vegetation, animals, and minerals found in China. For example, Shen noted that the mineral orpiment was used to quickly erase writing errors on paper.