Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SECTION III Medicines derived from the Vegetable Kingdom ALOES Aloe.—Inspissated juice from the transversely-cut bases of the leaves of various species of Aloe, evaporated to dryness. Nat. Ord.—Liliaceae. Aloin, C17H18O7.—A crystalline substance extracted from aloes by solvents and purified by recrystallisation. (B.P.) ' The several species of Aloe, which yield the various commercial aloes, are succulent, liliaceous perennials, having short woody stems ; strong, thick, fleshy, amplexicaul light-green leaves, with sharp, serrated edges, and a stout spine projecting at the apex ; while on a slightly branched scape is carried a raceme of yellow, scarlet, or white tubular pendulous flowers. Underneath the leathery cuticle, and exterior to the loose, mucilaginous pulp, lie elongated thin walled cells, which contain the yellow, bitter, purgative juice. BARBADOS ALOES.—Aloe Barbadensis, or Curacoa aloes, the product of the aloe vera, aloe chinensis, and probably other species, is the variety chiefly used in veterinary practice. It is imported from Barbados and most of the West Indian islands. A dwarf variety is cultivated ; the leaves, measuring a foot to two feet in length, are chopped off close to the stem ; are placed for twelve to twenty hours in tubs with their cut ends down ; from the longitudinal vessels the juice trickles, is collected in casks, and heated for four or five hours, sediment and impurities being carefully kept back. When sufficiently concentrated, the juice is poured into gourd shells, and the opening closed by a portion of shell let in, and secured in its place by a piece of coarse cloth nailed over it. The gourds, when filled, usually weigh from 10 to 40 lbs. Barbados aloes has a liver brown colour ; a brown, opaque, earthy fracture ;...