An Overview on The Antiviral Traditional Chinese Medicines

Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM)owns a long history of fighting viral diseases.TCM has acumulated a large amount of clinical experiences to treat viral diseases.Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor(Huangdi Neijing,300 BC)mentioned:When the five epidemics arrive,they are all infected by the same disease,regardless of their size,and have similar symptoms.Treatise on Cold Pathogenic Diseases(Shanghan Lun,220 AD)described the plague sweeping across the country and killed almost all people.And,numerous prescriptions in Treatise on Cold Pathogenic Diseases(Shanghan Lun)were used until today.Pestilence Theory(Wenyi Lun,1642)written by Wu Youxing differed from Treatise on Cold Pathogenic Diseases in its analysis of the characteristics of epidemics and therapeutic methods.A large number of classical antiviral traditional Chinese medicines and recipes have been accumulated.On the ground of traditional Chinese medicine,modern scientific methods were used to screen out a large number of antiviral traditional Chinese medicines to find new antiviral contents or form new recipes.Despite the disputation around the researchers,TCM provided effective therapeutics in the fight against the Coronavirus Disease(2019 COVID-19)epidemic in China.It demonstrated the potential advantages of Chinese medicines as antiviral medicines with broad research value and prospects.