They derive in all probability from anthracene, C11H1o.

The portion of aloes insoluble in cold water was formerly distinguished as Resin of Aloes, from the soluble portion which was called Bitter of aloes or Aloëtin. From the labours of Kossmann (1863), these portions appear to have nearly the same composition. The soluble portions treated with dilute sulphuric acid, is said to yield Aloëresic and Aloëretic Acids, both crystallizable, besides the indifferent substance Aloëretin. These observations have not to our knowledge been confirmed.

It has been shown by Tilden and Rammell that the Resin of Aloes may by prolonged treatment with boiling water be separated into two bodies, which they distinguish as Soluble Resin A. and Insoluble Resin B. With the first it is possible to form a brominated. compound, which though non-crystalline is apparently of definite composition. In the view of these chemists the Resin A. is a kind of anhydride of barbaloïn-Barbaloin, 2(C34H36O) less H2O=Aloe Resin A., CCH70027. The resin boiled with nitric acid yields a large amount of chrysammic acid, together with picric and oxalic acids, and carbonic anhydride. Insoluble Resin B. was found to have nearly the same composition as Resin A.

Aloes treated with various reagents affords a number of remarkable products. Thus, according to Rochleder and Czumpelick (1861) it yields, when boiled with soda-lye, colourless crystals an inch long, which appear to consist of a salt of Paracumaric Acid, together with small quantities of fragrant essential oils and volatile fatty acids.

When boiled with dilute sulphuric acid, aloes yields paracumaric acid, from which by fusion with caustic potash, as also directly from aloes, Hlasiwetz (1865) obtained Para-oxybenzoic Acid (p. 408). Weselsky (1872-73) has shown that accompanying the last two products, there is a peculiar, crystallizable acid, C'HO3, which he has named Alorcinic Acid.

By distillation with quick-lime, E. Robiquet (1846) obtained Aloïsol, a yellowish oil, which Rembold (1866) proved to be a mixture of dime

thylated phenol (Xylenol) CH3 {CH), with acetone and hydro

carbons.

Nitric acid forms with Barbadoes aloes, but still better, as Tilden has shown, with barbaloïn, Aloëtic Acid, CH*(NO2)*02, Chrysammic Acid, CH (NO)*O*, and finally Picric Acid, together with Oxalic Acid. The first two of these acids are distinguished by the splendid tints of their salts, which might be utilized in dyeing.

Chlorine, passed into an aqueous solution of aloes, forms a variety of substitution-products, and finally Chloranil, C°C11O3.

When somewhat strongly heated, aloes swells up considerably, and after ignition leaves a light, slow-burning charcoal, almost free from inorganic constituents. Ordinary Cape aloes, for example, dried at 100° C., leaves only 1 per cent. of ash.

Commerce-There were imported into the United Kingdom in the year 1870, 6264 cwt. of aloes. Of this quantity, South Africa shipped

1 Pharm. Journ. Sept. 21, 1872. 235.

4811 cwt.; and Barbados 970 cwt. The remainder was probably furnished by Eastern Africa.

The commercial value of the varieties of aloes is very different. In 1874, Barbados Aloes was quoted in price-currents at £3 58. to £9 10s. per cwt.; Socotrine at £5 to £13; while Cape Aloes was offered at £1 108. to £2. In England, the first two alone are allowed for pharmaceutical preparations. Even the Veterinary Pharmacopoeia1 names only Aloë Barbadensis. Cape Aloes is esteemed on the Continent, and chiefly consumed there.

Use Aloes is a valuable purgative in very common use, it is generally given combined with other drugs.

Adulteration-The physical characters of aloes, such as colour of the powder, odour, consistence and freedom from obvious impurity, coupled with its solubility in weak alcohol, usually suffice for determining its goodness.

BULBUS SCILLE.

Radix Scilla; Squill; F. Bulbe ou squames de Scille, Ognon marin; G. Meerzwiebel.

Botanical Origin-Urginea maritima Baker2 (Scilla maritima L., Urginea Scilla Steinheil). It is found generally in the regions bordering the Mediterranean, as in Southern France, Italy, Dalmatia, Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, North Africa and the Mediterranean islands. In Sicily, where it grows most abundantly, Urginea ascends to elevations of 3000 feet. It is also very common throughout the South of Spain, where it is by no means confined to the coast; it occurs also in Portugal. In the Riviera of Genoa the peasants like to see it growing under the fig trees.

Two varieties of squill, termed respectively white and red, are distinguished by druggists. In the first, the bulb-scales are colourless; in the second they are of a roseate hue. No other difference in the plants can be pointed out, nor have the two varieties distinct areas of growth.

History Squill is one of the most ancient of medicines. Epimenides, a Greek who lived in the 30th Olympiad, is said to have made much use of it, from which circumstance it came to be called Epimenidea. It is also mentioned by Theophrastus, and was probably well known to all the ancient Greek physicians. Pliny was not only acquainted with it, but had noticed its two varieties. Dioscorides describes the method of making vinegar of squills; and a similar preparation, as well as compounds of squill with honey, were administered by the Arabian physicians, and still remain in use. The medical school of Salerno preferred the red variety of the drug, which on the whole is not frequently met with in mediæval literature.

Description The bulb of squill is pear-shaped, and of the size of a

1 By R. V. Tuson, London, 1869.

2 Journ. of Linn. Soc., Bot., xiii. (1872) 221. The genus Urginea has flat, discoid seeds, while in Scilla proper they are triquetrous. The name Urginea was given in

allusion to the Algerian tribe Ben Urgia, near Bona, where Steinheil (1834) examined this plant.

3 Haller, Bibliotheca botanica, i. 12.

man's fist or larger, often weighing more than four pounds. It has the usual structure of a tunicated bulb; its outer scales are reddish-brown, dry, scarious, and marked with parallel veins. The inner are fleshy and juicy, colourless or of a pale rose tint, thick towards the middle, very thin and delicate at the edges, smooth and shining on the surface. The fresh bulb has a mucilaginous, bitter, acrid taste, but not much odour.

For medicinal use, squill is mostly imported ready dried. The bulbs are collected in the month of August, at which period they are leafless, freed from their dry outer scales, cut transversely into thin slices, and dried in the sun. Thus prepared, the drug appears in the form of narrow, flattish or four-sided curved strips, 1 to 2 inches long, and to of an inch wide, flexible, translucent, of a pale dull yellowish colour, or when derived from the red variety, of a decided roseate hue. When thoroughly dried, they become brittle and pulverizable, but readily absorb water to the extent of about 11 per cent. Powdered squill by the absorption of water from the air, readily cakes together into a hard mass.

Microscopic Structure-The officinal portion of the plant being simply modified leaves, has the histological characters proper to many of those organs. The tissue is made up of polyhedral cells, covered on both sides of the scales by an epidermis provided with stomata. It is traversed by numerous vascular bundles, and also exhibits smaller bundles of laticiferous vessels. If thin slices of squill be moistened with dilute alcohol, most of the parenchymatous cells are seen to be loaded with mucilage, which contracts into a jelly on the addition of alcohol. In the interior of this jelly, crystalline particles are met with consisting of oxalate of calcium. This salt is largely deposited in cells, forming either bundles of needle-shaped crystals, or large solitary square prisms, frequently a millimetre long. In either case they are enveloped by the mucilaginous matter already mentioned. Oxalate of calcium as occurring in other plants has been shown in many instances to originate in the midst of mucilaginous matter. The fact is remarkably evident in Scilla, especially when examined in polarized light.

On shaking thin slices of the bulb with water, the crystals are deposited in sufficient quantity to become visible to the naked eye, though their weight is actually very small. Direct estimation of the oxalic acid (by titration with chamæleon solution) gave us only 307 per cent. of C2Ca04,3H2O from white squill dried at 100° C., which moreover yielded only 2 to 5 per cent. of ash. It is these extremely sharp brittle crystals which occasion the itching and redness, and sometimes even vesication, which result from rubbing a slice of fresh squill on the skin. These effects, which have long been known, were attributed to a volatile acrid principle, until their true cause was recognized by Schroff.'

The mucilage also contains albuminous matters, hence the orange colour it assumes on addition of iodine. The vascular bundles are accompanied by some rows of longitudinally extended cells, containing a small number of starch granules. In the red squill the colouring matter is contained in many of the parenchymatous cells, others being entirely devoid of it. It turns blackish-green if a persalt of iron be added.

1 We have found that the slimy juice of the leaves of Agapanthus umbellatus Hérit., which is very rich in spicular crystals, also

occasions when rubbed on the skin both itching and redness, lasting for several hours.

Chemical Composition-The most abundant among the constituents of squill are mucilaginous and saccharine matters. Mucilage may be precipitated by means of neutral and basic acetate of lead, yet there remains in solution another substance of the same class, called Sinistrin. It was discovered in 1879 by Schmiedeberg, who obtained it by mixing the powder of squill, either red or white, with a solution of basic acetate of lead in slight excess. The gummy matters thus forming insoluble lead compounds being removed, the liquid is deprived of the lead and mixed with slaked lime. An insoluble compound of sinistrin and calcium separates and yields the former on decomposing the well washed precipitate with carbonic acid. The small amount of calcium remaining in the filtrate is to be removed by adding cautiously to the warm solution the small quantity just required of oxalic acid. Lastly, sinistrin is thrown down by alcohol. It is a white amorphous powder, on exposure to air soon forming transparent brittle lumps. The composition of sinistrin is that of dextrin = CH"O", both these substances being very closely allied, yet the aqueous solution of sinistrin deviates the plane of polarization to the left. The rotatory power appears not to be much influenced by the concentration or the temperature of the solution of sinistrin.

Analkaline solution of tartrate of copper is not acted upon by sinistrin. It is transformed into sugar by boiling it for half an hour with water containing 1 per cent. of sulphuric acid. The sugar thus produced is stated by Schmiedeberg to consist of lævulose' and another sugar, which in all probability, when perfectly pure, must prove devoid of rotatory power.

The name sinistrin has also been applied to a mucilaginous matter extracted from barley (see Hordeum decorticatum); it remains to be proved that the latter is identical with the sinistrin of squill.

We have obtained a considerable amount of an uncrystallizable levogyre sugar by exhausting squill with dilute alcohol. Alcohol added to an aqueous infusion of squill causes the separation of the mucilage, together with albuminoid matter. If the alcohol is evaporated and a solution of tannic acid is added, the latter will combine with the bitter principle of squill, which has not yet been isolated, although several chemists have devoted to it their investigations, and applied to it the names of Scillitin or Skulein. Schroff, to whom we are indebted for a valuable monograph on Squill, infers from his physiological experiments the presence of a non-volatile acrid principle (Skulein ?), together with scillitin, which latter he supposes to be a glucoside.

Merck of Darmstadt has isolated Scillipierin, soluble in water; Scillitoxin, likewise a bitter principle, insoluble in water, but readily dissolving in alcohol; and Scillin, a crystalline substance, abundantly soluble in boiling ether. The physiological action of these substances and of Scillain has been examined (1878) by Moeller, and by Jarmersted (1879); that of scillitoxin and scillain was found to be analogous to that of Digitalis.

1 This is the name applied to the lævogyrate uncrystallizable glucose produced, together with crystallizable dextro-glucose, by decomposing cane sugar by means of dilute acids.

2 In 1834 first proposed, by Marquart, for inulin.

3 In Greece they have even attempted to

manufacture alcohol by fermenting and distilling squill bulbs.-Heldreich, Nutpflanzen Griechenlands, 1862. 7.

Reprinted from the Zeitschrift der Gesellschaft der Aerzte zu Wien, No. 42 (1864). Abstracted also in Canstatt's Jahresbericht 1864. 19, and 1865. 238.

Commerce-Dried squill, usually packed in casks, is imported into England from Malta.

Use-Commonly employed as a diuretic and expectorant.

Substitutes-There are several plants of which the bulbs are used in the place of the officinal squill, but which, owing to the abundance and low price of the latter, never appear in the European market.

1. Urginea altissima Baker (Ornithogalum altissimum L.), a South African species, very closely related to the common squill, and having, as it would appear, exactly the same properties.'

2. U. indica Kth. (Scilla indica Roxb.), a widely diffused plant, occurring in Northern India, the Coromandel Coast, Abyssinia, Nubia, and Senegambia. It is known by the same Arabic and Persian names as U. maritima, and its bulb is used for similar purposes. But according to Moodeen Sheriff it is a poor substitute for the latter, having little or no action when it is old and large.

3. Scilla indica Bakers (non Roxb.), (Ledebouria hyacinthina Roth), native of India and Abyssinia, has a bulb which is often confused in the Indian bazaars with the preceding, but is easily distinguishable when entire by being scaly not tunicated); it is said to be a better representative of the European squill.4

4. Drimia ciliaris Jacq., a plant of the Cape of Good Hope, of the order Liliacea. Its bulb much resembles the officinal squill, but has a juice so irritating if it comes in contact with the skin, that the plant is called by the colonists Jeukbol, i.e. Itch-bulb. It is used medicinally as an emetic, expectorant, and diuretic."

5. Crinum asiaticum var. toxicarium Herbert (C. toxicarium Roxb.), a large plant, with handsome white flowers and noble foliage, cultivated in Indian gardens, and also found wild in low humid spots in various parts of India and the Moluccas, and on the sea-coast of Ceylon. The bulb has been admitted to the Pharmacopoeia of India (1868), chiefly on the recommendation of O'Shaughnessy, who considers it a valuable emetic. We have not been able to examine a specimen, and cannot learn that the drug has been the subject of any chemical investigation.

MELANTHACEÆ.

RHIZOMA VERATRI ALBI.

Radix Veratri, Radix Hellebori albi; White Hellebore; F. Racine d'Ellebore blanc; G. Weisse Nieswurzel, Germer.

Botanical Origin-Veratrum album L.-This plant occurs in moist grassy places in the mountain regions of Middle and Southern Europe,

1 Pappe, Flora Medica Capensis Prodro

mus, ed. 2, 1857. 41.

2 Supplement to the Pharmacopia of

India, Madras, 1869. 250.

3 Saunders, Refugium Botanicum, iii. (1870) appendix, p. 12.

Suppl. to the Pharm. of India, 250.

5 Pappe, op. cit. 42.