ABSTRACT
Objective: To analyze medication rules of national medical masters in the treatment of stomachache by data mining. Method: Prescriptions were collected from 9 works as well as the first batch of national medical masters' medical cases and prescriptions for stomachache recorded in CNKI. Then, Microsoft Excel 2016 was adopted for analyzing the frequencies, properties, flavors and meridian tropisms of herbs, the Apriori algorithm provided by SPSS Clementine 12.0 software was used to analyze association rules of the herbs, and factor analysis was conducted by SPSS 19.0 software. Result: A total of 175 prescriptions containing 230 herbs were selected. The top five herbs used in frequency ranking were Glycyrrhizae Radix et Rhizoma, Paeoniae Radix Alba, Pinelliae Rhizoma, Atractylodis Macrocephalae Rhizoma, Poria. The medical properties with high usage frequency were warm, mild and slight cold. The flavors were sweet, bitter and pungent. Meridian tropisms were spleen, stomach and lung. Herbs for regulating Qi, tonifying Qi and promoting digestion ranked top three according to the classification of efficacy. The association rules analysis showed that the highest confidence and support of the related drugs was Atractylodis Macrocephalae Rhizoma→Codonopsis Radix-Poria, which reflected treatment characteristics of national medical masters with Sijunzitang as the basic prescription for tonifying Qi. A total of 12 strongly association rules of 2-drug pairs were obtained by association rules, and the most commonly used of which was Paeoniae Radix Alba-Glycyrrhizae Radix et Rhizoma. Nine common factors were respectively extracted by factor analysis. Conclusion: Herbs used in the prescriptions of national medical masters for treatment of stomachache are often with the actions of regulating Qi, invigorating deficiency and benefiting Qi, in addition, Shaoyao Gancaotang is often used to generate Yin and relieve pain.