542 
RESEARCHES ON ALOETINE * 
By M. E. Roeiquet. 
The subject with which I am now about to entertain the 
Academy, is not perfectly new, and it has already had long 
and fruitless investigation at my hands. 
Ten years ago, I published my first work on the juice of 
aloes, and I was enabled, among other results, to prove 
that — 
1. This juice exists in the different varieties of aloes, in the 
state of colourless liquid, acquiring the appearance and che- 
mical constitution which we are acquainted with, in conse- 
quence of an absorption of oxygen. 
2. Socotrine aloes contains a proximate principle, to which 
I gave the name of aloetine, formed of carbon, hydrogen, and 
oxygen, without a trace of nitrogen, but which could not be 
crystallized. 
I shall only speak from memory of chloralise, and chloraloile, 
the chlorated derivatives of aloetine, and only because their 
existence having been disputed, I have not taken the trouble 
to place crystallized specimens of them before the Academy 
on the present occasion. 
In 1851, Messrs. Smith, of Edinburgh, were enabled to 
extract from Barbadoes aloes a crystallizable body, to which 
they gave the name of aloine. The process followed by these 
chemists consisted in triturating aloes with sand, removing, 
by lixiviation, everything that is soluble in cold water, and 
evaporating in vacuo , under the influence of a temperature of 
50° to 60° C. (122° to 140° F.) 
I was no little surprised to learn this result, for two 
reasons : in the first place, this mode of preparation was one 
of the first to occur to my mind, and I had applied it in vain 
to Socotrine aloes; and, in the next place, being of opinion, 
in common with all the authors of treatises on materia 
medica, that transparent and vitreous Socotrine aloes is the 
best of all kinds, I had not thought of using Barbadoes or 
hepatic aloes. Being thus punished for my excessive con- 
fidence in the statements of others, I very soon returned to 
my work. My first care was to repeat Messrs. Smiths’ 
mode of preparation on Barbadoes aloes, and on vitreous 
Socotrine aloes. In the first case, I obtained crystals ; in 
the second, an amorphous mass, without any crystalline 
appearance. 
* Read to the 4 Academie de Medecine,’ Eeb. 26, 1856. 
