The invention relates to an automatic medicine taking cabinet and a medicine taking method. The automatic medicine taking cabinet comprises a cabinet body, the cabinet body comprises a medicine placing rack, a front panel located in front of the medicine placing rack, a cabinet door located on the rear side of the medicine placing rack, a medicine taking mechanism and a control system. The invention further discloses the medicine taking method. According to the automatic medicine taking cabinet, a medicine taking trolley hopper of the medicine taking mechanism can reach the lower portions of medicine containing bins along medicine taking rail units, walk to the left side of the medicine taking rail units after taking medicines and pour the medicines into an adjacent medicine hopper, and then a medicine collecting trolley reaches the designated medicine outlet position through a lifting unit and a horizontal moving rail unit. By adopting the cooperation of conveyor belts and correlationsensors, the problems of a medicine feeding mode and counting are well solved, and when the medicines are placed, only the cabinet door needs to be opened, the medicines are pushed in from the back,the previous medicines are in the front, the current medicines are in the back, the operation is simple and convenient, and the situation that the previous medicines are out of date due to unreasonable medicine placement can be prevented.