- ALOES, consider’d as a Plant or Herb, is a Plant, the leaves wherof are about two inches thick, prickly and chamfer’d; in the middle there rises a stem, wherein there is a white kernel, extremely light, and almost round. There are Aloes to be found at present in several places in France. There is a very bitter juice extracted out of this Plant, which preserves dead bodies from putrefaction. They say, but this is mere fable, that Aloes never flowers but once in a hundred years, and that as its flower opens it makes a great noise. There have been several seen blowing in the Royal Garden at Paris, and without making any sensible noise. It is very probable that this Plant is the only true Aloes, for what is said of the wood of Aloes is by many learned Men thought fabulous.
John xix. 39.From this Plant is extracted the drug called Aloes, which is a very bitter liquor made use of in embalming, to secure bodies from putrefaction. Nicodemus bought about an hundred pounds of Myrrh and Aloes to embalm the body of Jesus Christ. In the Proverbs the debauch’d Woman says, that she had perfum’d her bed with Myrrh, Aloes, and Cinnamon; and the Spouse in the Canticles, that Myrrh, Aloes, and all manner of perfumes, are to be found in the garden of her beloved. The Hebrew text in these places reads Ahalim, which the Rabbins interpret Santal, and which is an aromatick wood; but the generality understand by it either the Aloes we have been just now speaking of, or another Aloes of Syria, which we have said something of in the article preceding this.
The Arabians call the Aloes that are taken for a Plant Sabr o. They believe that of all the several species of Aloes, that which grows in the island of Socotorah is the most excellent; that Alexander the Great transplanted the inhabitants of this island into Arabia and Ethiopia, and settled Macedonians in their room, to cultivate Aloes; the People of Socotorah gather the leaves of this Plant in the month of July, and boil them in great Chaldrons to extract the juice out of them, which they put into bottles, and expose them to the Sun during the dog days.