Fenugreek is a kind of Chinese herbal medicine with great development prospects.At present,there are many modern reports on its components extraction,quality standards,processing technology and pharmacological effects.However,there is still a lack of research on sorting out and analyzing the relevant ancient records,and people's herbological cognition of fenugreek is still controversial and incomplete.In this study,through systematic review and analysis of ancient records,the names,original plant,processing methods and properties(including nature,flavor,meridian tropism,action,application,toxicity and contraindication)of fenugreek were comprehensively verified for the first time,which provided a herbological reference for further development,utilization and in-depth study of Fenugreek.It is found that fenugreek has several names such as Kudou,Luba,Huba and Jidou.Based on analyzing the descriptions and pictures of fenugreek original plant in ancient records,there is a strong likelihood that the ancient and modern medicinal fenugreek belong to the same species.In addition to the current common method of stir-frying with salt solution,the ancient books also recorded eight processing methods of fenugreek,such as stir-frying,steaming,baking,and calcining.According to the research of properties,it is found that fenugreek is warm-hot in nature,bitter,sweet,and pungent in flavor,and attributive to the kidney,stomach,liver and bladder meridians.In addition to the efficacy recorded in pharmacopoeia,this study also complemented fenugreek's actions of"improving hearing and eyesight,guiding fire to origin"and application of"fullness and discomfort in abdomen and hypochondrium".According to the textual research of toxicity and contraindication,fenugreek has been recorded as non-toxic in the past dynasties,but it should be used cautiously in the excess-heat syndrome,Yin deficiency syndrome,and pregnant women.

OBJECTIVE To establish a comprehensive and rapid m ethod for the a nalysis of chemical constituents as phthalides and organic acids in Angelica sinensis ，and to provide scientific reference for the quality evaluation and pharmacodynamic substance research of A. sinensis . METHODS The 70％ ethanol extract of A. sinensis was analyzed by ultra high performance liquid chromatography-quadrupole-time of flight tandem mass spectrometry （UPLC-Q-TOF/MS）. The determination was performed on ACQUITY UPLC BEH-C 18 column with mobile phase consisted of 0.1％ formic acid solution- acetonitrile（gradient elution ）at the flow rate of 0.3 mL/min. The column temperature was set at 30 ℃，and sample size was 2 µL. The ion source was an electrospray ion source ，using positive ion scanning mode ，and the mass scanning range was m/z 50-1 000. Capillary voltage was 4 000 V； atomizer pressure was 35 psi；cracking voltage was 135 V and the taper hole voltage was 65 V；the temperature of dry gas was 320 ℃；the flow of dry gas was 10 L/min and the flow of sheath gas was 11 L/min；collision energy were 20 and 40 V. Qualitative Analysis 10.0 software was used to obtain the retention time of compounds ，the accurate mass number of excimer ion peaks and secondary fragments. The compounds were analyzed by comparing with the mass spectra of the reference substance ，combined with relevant literature ，mass spectrometry cleavage law and database such as Chemspider ，MassBank，PubChem. RESULTS A total of 72 compounds were identified or deduced from A. sinensis ，including 55 phthalides，13 organic acids and 4 other constituents. CONCLUSIONS The established method is rapid and accurate for the identification of chemical constituents from A. sinensis ，such as organic acids and phthalides ，which provides an efficient and rapid analytical method for the comprehensive characterization of its chemical constituents.