ALOE 5 



to this substance thread the Arabian Nights, (Burton's 

 Translation). The following excerpts from that well- 

 known publication show conclusively that "aloes" of 

 the present day could not have been the "Ligna Aloes" 

 of past Oriental lore: 



"Furthermore, they decorated the cities after the 

 goodliest fashion and diffused scents from censors and 

 burnt aloes-wood and other perfumes in all the markets." 

 Vol. X: p. 56. 



"Then the barber made him sit on the dais and the 

 boys proceeded to shampoo him, whilst the censers 

 fumed with the finest lign-aloes." Vol. IX: p. 150. 



That the substance named could not have been a 

 mixture, is illustrated by the following: 



"So I bade them set before him a box containing 

 Nadd [a mixture, Burton] the best of compound per- 

 fumes, together with fine lign-aloes, ambergris and musk 

 unmixed." 



By modern writers, the aloe plant is considered to 

 have grown wild in India from a very remote period. 

 It was probably introduced into that country by the 

 Arabs, the disseminators of knowledge concerning the 

 medicinal virtues of plants. Aloes was employed by 

 Galen (254 a), and was described by the Greek and 

 Roman writers of the first century, chief among whom 

 were Dioscorides (194) and Pliny (514), whose de- 

 scriptions of this drug and its uses, however, bear much 

 resemblance to each other. 



Socotrine aloes appears to have acquired its reputa- 

 tion at an early date. Clusius (153), in 1593, reports 

 that Mesue, the Arabian pharmaceutical writer, "the 

 father of Pharmacopoeias, " (who died about 1028 

 A. D.), knew of the Socotrine origin of aloes, mentioning 



