Orient, via the great Eastern trading routes.
Wound-healer
Aloe vera’s use as a wound-healer and for general skin treatment is perhaps its most universally acclaimed virtue among many diverse and distant ethnic groups. In northern Mexico and the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas, Aloe vera, known as savila, grows profusely and is used to heal skin diseases. In Mexico the leaves are gathered in the semi-wild to treat burns, bruises, skin irritations and even leprosy. In Florida, Aloe vera is widespread and has been used traditionally for treating jelly-fish stings as well as bee stings. Mayan women in the Yucatan region of Mexico have used Aloe vera for centuries to moisturize their skin. Like the Zulus in southern Africa, they also use it to wean their children from breast-feeding.
Throughout Central and South America, the pulp of Aloe vera is regarded as a mild laxative; another one of its earliest and most common uses worldwide. Indeed, the early Arabs’ principal use of the drug Aloes was as a laxative, although other uses were suggested in Persian records of the 6th century BC. They were using it both internally and externally, and processed the plant by separating the gel and sap from the rind using their bare feet. The resulting pulp was placed in goatskin bags and dried in the sun before the contents were ground into powder. Still today Aloe is called the ‘Desert Lily’ by the Bedouin tribes and the Tuareg of the Sahara Desert.
ALOE VERA
A Sumerian clay tablet, found in the city of Nippur in Mesopotamia and dating from around 2,000 BC, includes Aloe in its list of useful healing plants. This is the earliest recorded pharmaceutical use of Aloe and predates the written Egyptian records, which are commonly cited as being the first known source of Aloe vera and its medicinal uses.
Around 1500 BC, during the reign of the Pharaoh Amen-Hotep I, the Egyptians gave us the first detailed analysis of Aloe’s medical value in the Papyrus Ebers.1 This was named after the German Egyptologist Georg Ebers who, together with a wealthy German called Herr Gunther, bought it in the winter of 1872 from an Egyptian who had found it in 1858 between the knees of a mummy in a tomb at El Assassif, near Thebes. The Papyrus Ebers was given intact to the University of Leipzig, where it remains to this day in almost perfect condition.
The Papyrus Ebers is not so much a coherent text as a collection of medical documents and folklore on the causes and treatments of diseases and the correct religious rites to accompany them. Ebers considered the book to be one of the ‘Hermetic Books’ of the ancient Egyptians. It is the earliest known complete papyrus extant, and is extremely detailed. In fact it is a miscellaneous collection compiled from at least 40 different sources. Some of the material is much older than 1500 BC, anything from 500 or 2,000 years prior to the date it became a coherent text.
In ancient Egypt, medicine and healing were intricately connected with the spiritual life: incantations were used to invoke those gods who ruled life and healing, in particular Isis and Ra. Uses for Aloe were both pharmaceutical and spiritual.
Although it is customary to refer to the Papyrus Ebers as giving 12 formulae for the use of Aloe to treat a number of disorders, this is now questionable following consultation with the Egyptian Department of the British Museum. According to Miss Carol Andrews, Assistant Keeper of Egyptian Antiquities, on checking two-thirds of the remedies we find that only two refer to a plant which has a bitter, disagreeable taste and needs to be compensated for with the sweetness of honey. It would appear that this is Aloe vera. The other remedies refer to cinnamon bark, which could have been confused with aloeswood, another aromatic wood.
Greek doctors did some of their medical training in the great school of Alexandria and their knowledge of the Aloe plant surpassed that of the Egyptians. Aloe was first mentioned in Greek pharmacology by Celsius (25 BC–AD 50) when it was referred to as a purgative, one of the best known and earliest uses of the plant. It is to a famous 1st-century Greek physician, Pedanius Dioscorides of Anazarba, however, that we are indebted for his extensive work on the plant in his De Materia Medica (AD 41–68). This is the first detailed Western treatise following on from the Papyrus Ebers and describes more than 600 plants.
Some 400 years later, the Greek Herbal of Dioscorides was illustrated by a Byzantine and called the Codex Anicine Julianae. It is found in Vienna and includes some of the oldest surviving representations of Eastern Mediterranean plants, including a coloured plate of Aloe vera.
It took a further 1,500 years from the time of Dioscorides before his De Materia Medica was translated into English by John Goodyer. From this 15th-century translation, together with knowledge of the works of Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79), the great classical physician Rufus of Ephesus (early 2nd century AD) and the great Galen (late 2nd century AD), known as the Father of Modern Medicine, Western physicians learned of the wide range of Aloe’s medical versatility. This included treating ulcerated genitals, healing the foreskin, getting rid of haemorrhoids, wound healing, treating insomnia and stomach disorders, reversing hair loss, treating mouth and gum diseases, boils, sunburn, constipation and kidney ailments. In addition, it prevented vomiting of blood, was an effective purgative and was good for tonsillitis and eye infections.
In an altogether charming description of the plant and its medicinal uses, Dioscorides describes the plant as having a leaf…
like Squill, thick, gross, somewhat broad in ye compass, broken or bowbacked behind, but on either part it hath ye leaves prickly by ye sides, appearing thinly, short. But it sends out a stalk like to Anthericum, but a white flower, & a seed like until Asphodelus. All of it, is of a strong scent, & very bitter to ye taster, but it is but of one root having a root as a stake. It grows in India very much, gross, from whence also ye extracted juice is brought. It grows also in Arabia and Asia, & in certain sea-bordering places and Islands, as in Andros, not good for extracting juice but fitting for ye conglutinating of wounds, being laid on when it is beaten small …2
Medically Aloe’s properties were wide-ranging, and Dioscorides recommended it for numerous conditions including:
…splitting of blood … cleanseth ye Icterus … taken either with water, or sod honey it looseth ye belly … it assuageth Scabritias and the itchings of ye eye corner, and ye headache being anointed with acetum & Rosaceum, on ye forehead & the temples, & with wine it stays ye hair falling off, & with honey and wine it is good for ye tonsillae, as also the gums and all griefs in ye mouth. But it is roasted also for eye medicines in a cleane and red hot earthen vessell, being kept turned with a splatter until that it is roasted equally …3
In the same period, Pliny the Elder (AD 23–79), a highly respected Roman physician, in his Natural History not only confirmed Dioscorides’ writings on Aloes but also added his own medical findings. He advises that the best aloes to use ‘will be fatty and shiny, of a ruddy colour, friable, compact like liver, and easily melted’. Aloe’s nature is ‘bracing, astringent and gently warming’. Of its many uses, the chief is to ‘relax the bowels, for it is almost the only laxative that is also a stomach tonic, no ill effects whatever resulting from its use’. To regularize the bowels, he recommends Aloe in warm or cold water, taken two or three times daily as required. For hair loss prevention, Aloe mixed with dry wine should be rubbed on the head ‘in the contrary way to the hair’. Mixed with rose oil and vinegar, Aloe soothed headaches if applied to the temples or forehead.4
Pliny discovered that the root of the Aloe could be boiled down and used as a treatment in leprosy, for healing leprous sores. Furthermore, he found that it could help check perspiration by mixing Aloe with rue boiled in rose oil. Doubtless this was the world’s first-known anti-perspirant!
After
