ALTHEA FRUTEX. 21 



ALOES. The medicinal juice is extracted from the 

 common aloes-tree, which has no relation to the costly tree 

 of the East, whose spicy virtues are alluded to by both 

 David and Solomon, nor yet to the American Aloe, or 

 Agave. 



The American Aloe is of the Amaryllis tribe, but the true 

 Aloe of the Day-lily tribe. 



The true Aloe is highly purgative, but the American Aloe 

 abounds in mild starchy properties; the American Aloe 

 sends up a gigantic flower-stem, from which issue branches 

 of cup-shaped flowers, but each plant flowers but once, while 

 the true Aloe flowers every year. 



The drug is extracted from the pulp of the leaves of 

 several species. The Aloe Socotrina, so called from the 

 island of Socotra, is now hardly to be had ; that which is 

 sold for Socotrine being a mixture of Barbadoes and Cape 

 aloes. 



Aloes is a very strong cathartic. As a veterinary medi- 

 cine it is often very efficacious ; but though a valuable horse 

 medicine, it is rarely given to other domestic animals. 

 Even to the horse it must be administered with care. For 

 purging a horse, the usual dose is from four to eight or ten 

 drachms ; but, except in certain diseases, more than eight 

 should never be given even to the strongest horse, and six 

 or seven drachms are a sufficient dose for a family horse. 



It may be given in the solid or liquid state ; but the best 

 method of administering it is to powder it, and mix it up 

 with flour and water, or honey, or some simple, to a stiff 

 paste, and placing it at the root of the roof of the horse's 

 tongue, he swallows it without difficulty. (See Johnson's 

 Farmer's Encyclopaedia.) 



ALTHEA FRUTEX, OR ROSE OF SHARON, is 



a hardy shrub, growing very common in Virginia, and easily 



