ALOES. 
109 
give one grain of watery extract in a pill, and a dose of potash and cardamoms in a 
draught, than to waste four grains of the extract in an ounce of decoction. 
The best aloes should always be given, no matter its price. It would not fetch the 
money if not worth it. 
The watery extract should also be always given ; the crude is barbarous. How is the 
dose to he fixed of a drug of which twenty to sixty per cent, may be inert ? 
All the preparations containing alkali, like the enema aloes of the P. B., “in order to 
render the resinous parts soluble,” etc. etc., are nonsensical barbarisms. The active 
principle of aloes is as soluble as sugar, and what is dissolved by alkali is useless, if not 
mischievous. 
The time which aloes’ takes to operate, viz. from six to ten hours, the greater acti¬ 
vity of solid than of liquid preparations, and the kind of effect produced, are positive and 
ultimate facts. There is said to be a notion that it acts on the muscular fibre, and not 
on the mucous membrane of the intestines; that it has “an effect on the venous 
system and that the reason it acts on the large intestines is because it does not dis¬ 
solve until it reaches the colon. We may well gasp when such delirious stuff is handed 
about as medical knowledge! Aloes is as soluble as sugar; no respectable pharmaceu¬ 
tist would sell a pill knowingly that would not dissolve in the stomach, and if it did 
pass the thirty feet of stomach and small intestines undissolved, who could ensure its so¬ 
lution in the six feet of the drier and more sluggish colon ? 
Its action on the colon is through the blood, and not local. An enema of pure aloes 
neither irritates the rectum, nor a wound. 
Aloes, so salutary to the torpid bowels of full-fed, phlegmatic people as an eccoprotic , 
L e. “ scavenger,” may gripe the colon and irritate the rectum severely if given to 
persons whose bowels are not loaded, and tongues clean and reddish. Or it may do the 
same to any one, if given too often or in too large a dose, or for the purpose of acting 
like a saline purge. Great spasm of the rectum, piles, and a copious discharge of thin 
mucus may be produced by too large doses or too often. 
Aloes may be taken for forty years discreetly, and produce no piles. Again, piles 
may come to persons who ought to take aloes but do not, and may follow any violent 
purge which forces the mucous membrane through the sphincter. They often follow 
spontaneous diarrhoea and dysentery, as they do aloes if misused, no more and no less. 
The dose of aloes should be as small as possible, and reduced by degrees. Half a 
grain to a grain of watery extract is enough for ordinary constipation. 
It may be given to the youngest children—for instance, to babies of a year old, whose 
bowels are obstinately constipated, and motions pale and curdy. For children too young 
to swallow a pill, no vehicle is equal to the powder or (better) the powdered extract of 
true liquorice, which again may be enveloped in a bit of butter, and put on the back of 
the tongue. A bit of extract of liquorice dissolved in the mouth first, and coating the 
tongue, prevents some nauseous medicines from being immediately tasted. 
Experience seems to show that aloes acts more satisfactorily when dissolved and com¬ 
bined with certain substances not purgative. But the aloes must not he spoiled by too 
long a process. Minderer and Marcquis used to subject aloes to insuccation , i. e. dilution 
with bland juices ; they dissolved it in water—(Marcquis threw away the dregs, like a 
man of sense)—then mixed the solution with wine, the juice of rose-leaves, etc. In 
fact, the pompous ‘ Aloedarium ’ of Minderer was one preparation of the kind, and the 
pilules aloes dilutee of the late Dr. Marshall Hall another. The prescription of Dr. M. 
Hall, in so far as it used crude aloes, was worse than its Jewish predecessor, the pilulce- 
alefangina , 500 years earlier, and that of the present P. B. worse than that of the 
P. L. 
Many aloetic compounds have existed with acid, including deservedly-forgotten 
elixirs. One of some value remains in the pills of Barhadoes aloes four grains mixed 
with two minims of concentrated sulphuric acid, which is said to overcome very obsti¬ 
nate bowels. The acid seems to lose its causticity. This is quoted from the 4 Surgeon’s 
Yade Mecum,’ ninth edition, appendix, where it is said to be derived from Dr. Robert 
Dickson, the eminent botanist and pharmacologist. 
Of the ancient combinations of aloes with aromatics, the hiera pier a, or “sacred 
bitter,” of the Grseco-Romans, a compound of aloes with cinnamon, is still given, mixed 
with gin, by old women to young girls troubled with “ obstructions.” The pills of aloes 
with myrrh, which bear the name of Rufus, who lived in the second century, and with 
