Celsus describes it as specially valuable for city men and men of letters (urbani et literarum cupidi); he says it is an ingredient in all purgatives, and it is clear from the later Greek and Roman writers how highly this remedy was esteemed. In “Pharmacographia” Hanbury refers to the legend of Alexander the Great visiting the Island of Socotra at the instance of Aristotle particularly on account of the aloes grown there. It is said that Alexander left a colony of Ionians on the island in order to ensure a sufficient supply of the drug. Undoubtedly there were Greek Christians there in Mohammedan times and it is probable that the Arabs invented the Alexandrian origin of them. [Illustration: THE ALOE IN FLOWER.] [Illustration: A MEDICINAL ALOE GROWING UNDER GLASS IN THE CHELSEA PHYSIC GARDEN. [This photograph was published in “London Botanic Gardens” by P. E. F. Perrédès, B.Sc., F.L.S., published by the Wellcome Chemical Research Laboratories, and is kindly lent for this book by the Director of those Laboratories, Dr. Frederick B. Power]. ] The fame of aloes was well maintained by the Arabian physicians, and the old Greek and Roman formulas for aloetic compounds were passed on to the Middle Ages by Mesué of Damascus, together with some new ones. It was one of the drugs recommended to Alfred the Great by the Patriarch of Jerusalem. In 1622 Mindererus published a treatise on a special compound of aloes which he had devised. Raymond Minderer was the most famous physician of his time. He lived at Augsburg, and was the appointed medical adviser to the Duke of Bavaria and the great house of the Fuggers, the Rothschilds of the period. Minderer’s book was entitled “Aloedarium,” and it described in loving detail each of the nine ingredients of what is supposed to have been the lineal ancestor of our modern compound rhubarb pill. The components were:-- Aloes 3 ounces, Marum (herb mastic), and Saffron, of each 3 scruples, Agaric, Costus, and Myrrh, of each 3 half-drachms, Ammoniacum, 3 drachms, Rhubarb, 3 two-drachms (ʒvi), and Lign Aloes, 3 half-scruples. These drugs were each separately macerated in appropriate liquids, the aloes in rose water, the myrrh in rue vinegar, and so forth. Mindererus recommended these pills not so much as a purgative, but as a general tonic, especially useful to strong, fair, well-fed persons. Following Minderer’s book, and indeed slavishly copying it, came a treatise by Dr. William Marcquis of Antwerp, entitled “Aloe Morbifuga.” The only notable feature of this work is that its author is clear about the importance of that part of the aloes which is soluble in water as the constituent of the drug in which the purgative properties reside. He was, in fact, the originator of our aqueous extract of aloes. CASTOR OIL.