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From: larry@kitty.UUCP (Larry Lippman)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Aloe, Aloe...
Summary: Use of aloe to promote healing of burns...
Message-ID: <4230@kitty.UUCP>
Date: 8 Dec 90 05:42:57 GMT
References: <4198@kitty.UUCP> <59594@microsoft.UUCP> <1990Dec6.233534.453@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>
Organization: Recognition Research Corp., Clarence, NY
Lines: 42

In article <1990Dec6.233534.453@ux1.cso.uiuc.edu>, changcs@aries.scs.uiuc.edu (Carole S. Chang) writes:
> Hi there!  I took a class last year called "Organic Analysis,"  but since the
> prof was a heavily natural-products-type dude, there was a lot of emphasis on
> learning to isolate and spectroscopically study natural products.

	That sounds like a great way to teach such a course!  If I might
be permitted to make a minor pun, such a course really brings analytical
chemistry down to earth.  I hope you both enjoyed the course and derived
benefit from it.

> Each of us
> had term-long projects which involved isolating some compound from some plant
> or animal, and one of the groups had to isolate the active ingredient in aloe

	A minor digression...  Just for the hell of it, several years ago
I ground up several pounds of dried catnip in a Wiley mill, and proceeded
to isolate the active ingredient (nepetalactone) using a bank of Soxhlet 
extractors.  I had almost 100 gm isolated and was undergoing further solvent
purification in a rotary evaporator, when I managed let the rotary evaporator
flask roll off the bench onto the floor.  I've often wondered what would
happen if I brought one of my cats to my lab (most of the material ran
under a fume hood base cabinet - where it still resides)... :-)

> The prof was rather convinced that the compound, which is called aloin, if
> anyone wants to go look it up, can help burns.

	Well, I'll tell you something which puzzles me.  In the past week
since I wrote my articles on aloe, I checked no fewer than eight reference
books in my organization's library on pharmacy, pharmacology and pharmacognosy
and I can find *NO* reference that aloe has any recognized medical use
other than as a cathartic.  As an example, I not only checked a current
Remington's, but I looked in a 50-year old Remington's (which contains a
wealth of information on natural products).

	One would think that if aloe had any real healing effect on burns
it would be mentioned in Remington's or the Pharmacopeia/National Formulary.

	Hmmm...

Larry Lippman @ Recognition Research Corp.  "Have you hugged your cat today?"
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