Abstract: The Coptis chinensis is one of the traditional Chinese medicine, which has the property of clearing heat and expelling toxi. It has the strong enrichment effect on the heavy metal during the growth process. In order to quickly identify the heavy metal elements in traditional Chinese medicine, taking Pb as an example, used laser induced breakdown spectroscopy(LIBS) as the detection method to detect it. The experiment took the Nd:YAG solid pulse laser as the excitation light source, eight channel spectrometer for spectral collection, the characteristic spectrum line Pb 405.7 nm was used for analysis. The following results were obtained through experiments. The optimal laser energy of the experimental condition is 60 mJ, and the optimal delay time is 1 s. The quantitative analysis was carried out on 6 different concentrations of samples under the optimum experimental conditions, and the calibration curves of the spectral intensity and concentration were fitted. The results show that the linear fitting degree R2=0.976, and the detection limit is 0.19%. The following conclusions can be drawn from the experimental results, LIBS can be used for the rapid determination of Pb pollution in Coptis chinensis, and LIBS also has great potential for rapid detection of heavy metals in traditional Chinese medicine.