PHARMACOPCEIAL VEGETABLE DRUGS. 
flowers and many are cultivated in hot-houses. Aloe succotrina 
“grows in the Indies, and especially in the Island of Soccotera” 
(Lam.), but has long been cultivated in England. It is a shrub five 
or six feet high, with a stem marked with the scars of the fallen 
leaves. The stem is at first simple, but when the plant is old the stem 
is usually divided. At the top of each branch is borne a large cluster 
of thick, crowded, fleshy leaves. Each leaf is one and one-half to two 
feet long, rounded beneath, flattened on the upper side, the margins 
being each a row of white spines. The flowers are in a large terminal 
spike-like raceme, proceeding from the center of the leaf cluster. 
The flowers are orange-red, nodding, cylindrical, each borne on a short 
peduncle, slightly exserted. The pistil has a three-celled, many seeded 
ovary and a long simple style. 
The earliest history of the aloe plant is somewhat obscured by 
the fact that the name aloe, for example as it occurs in the Bible, re- 
lates to a substance entirely different from the inspissated juice of the 
various species of the modern aloe plant. The aloe of the Bible is 
the wood of aquilaria agallocha (Roxburgh) or lignaloes, which was 
used among the ancient nations as an incense, and was held in high 
esteem on account of its scarcity. With modern cathartic aloes it has 
nothing in common except the bitterness. 
The aloe plant is considered by modern writers to have grown 
wild in India from a very remote period. It was most likely intro- 
duced into that country by the Arabs, who probably were the distrib- 
utors of knowledge concerning the medicinal virtues of aloes. This 
drug was employed by Galen (254a), and later described by the 
Greek and Roman writers of the first century, chief among whom are 
Dioscorides (194) and Pliny (514), whose descriptions of aloes and its 
uses, however, bear much resemblance to each other. 
Socotrine aloes appears to have acquired its reputation at an early 
date. Clusius (153) in 1593 reports that Mesue, the Arabian pharma- 
ceutical writer, “the father of pharmacopeias,” (who died about A. D. 
1028), knew of the Socotrine origin of aloes, mentioning Persia, Ar- 
menia, and Arabia likewise as sources of aloes of commerce. Ibn 
Baitar (1197-1248) (214) speaks of aloes from the island of Soco- 
tra as being superior to that of the Arabian district of Yemen. 
The name aloe socotrina was undoubtedly derived from the island _ 
of Socotra off the entrance to the Red Sea. Yet, some authors main- 
tain that this appellation was by some given to the inspissated juice 
of aloe (succus citrinus) on account of the lemon-yellow color of its 
powder.* Not all of the earlier medico-pharmaceutical writers who 
afterwards considered the drug refer to Socotrine or any other special 
kind of aloes. Hieronymus Bock (1556) (82) merely alludes to the 
drug being brought from India and Arabia, a statement already found 
in Dioscorides. He relates an instance where the aloe plant is culti- 
vated in Germany under the name sempervivum as an indoor orna- 
mental plant. 
*Usage accepts that Aloe Succotrina is the plant described b La : 
Socotrina is the commercial extract derived fiends eertaln species a atoss:, ge Ba Hoo ae 
spelling of the latter word have occurred in older pharmacopeias. 
2 
