Abstract：LI Shizhen's Bencao Gangmu recorded a large number of content concerning the treatment of cough，which not only contains his personal clinical experience，but also the experience of various physicians before the Ming Dynasty on the treatment of cough. This masterpiece has made contributions to treatment of cough，which have been summarized by the authors of this paper as the following aspects：the principle for cough being deficiency-excess syndrome differentiation； the disease course determining whether the cough newly occurs or has existed for a long time；the location of cough being in the lung but also often in other organs；the syndrome of patients being differentiated to find out the cause of disease and the emphasis being attached to disease differentiation； the focus on classification and identification of cough； the common treatments of cough. This still has certain guiding significance to the treatment of clinical cough and is worth learning from.