Origin and history of all the pharmacopeial vegetable drugs : 8th and 9th decennial revisions (botanical descriptions omitted) with bibliography / by John Uri Lloyd.

  • Lloyd, John Uri, 1849-1936.
Date:
1929, ©1921
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Origin and history of all the pharmacopeial vegetable drugs : 8th and 9th decennial revisions (botanical descriptions omitted) with bibliography / by John Uri Lloyd. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    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