aloe, Agave Americana (q.v.), belongs to a different order, viz. Amaryllidaceae.
Aloes is a medicinal substance used as a purgative and produced from various species of aloe, such as A. vera, vulgaris, socotrina, chinensis, and Perryi. Several kinds of aloes are distinguished in commerce—Barbadoes, Socotrine, hepatic, Indian, and Cape aloes. The first two are those commonly used for medicinal purposes. Aloes is the expressed juice of the leaves of the plant. When the leaves are cut the juice flows out, and is collected and evaporated. After the juice has been obtained, the leaves are sometimes boiled, so as to yield an inferior kind of aloes.
From these plants active principles termed aloins are extracted by water. According to W. A. Shenstone, two classes are to be recognized: (1) Nataloins, which yield picric and oxalic acids with nitric acid, and do not give a red coloration with nitric acid; and (2) Barbaloins, which yield aloetic acid, C7H2N2O5, chrysammic acid, C7H2N2O6, picric and oxalic acids with nitric acid, being reddened by this reagent. This second group may be divided into α-Barbaloins, obtained from Barbadoes aloes, and reddened in the cold, and β-Barbaloins, obtained from Socotrine and Zanzibar aloes, reddened by ordinary nitric acid only when warmed, or by fuming acid in the cold. Nataloin, 2C17H18O7⋅H2O, forms bright yellow scales, melting at 212°–222°; barbaloin, C17H18O7, forms yellow prismatic crystals. Aloes also contain a trace of volatile oil, to which its odour is due.
The dose is 2 to 5 grains, that of aloin being 12 to 2 grains. Aloes can be absorbed from a broken surface and will then cause purging. When given internally it increases the actual amount as well as the rate of flow of the bile. It hardly affects the small intestine, but markedly stimulates the muscular coat of the large intestine, causing purging in about fifteen hours. There is hardly any increase in the intestinal secretion, the drug being emphatically not a hydragogue cathartic. There is no doubt that its habitual use may be a factor in the formation of haemorrhoids; as in the case of all drugs that act powerfully on the lower part of the intestine, without simultaneously lowering the venous pressure by causing increase of secretion from the bowel. Aloes also tends to increase the menstrual flow and therefore belongs to the group of emmenagogues. Aloin is preferable to aloes for therapeutic purposes, as it causes less, if any, pain. It is a valuable drug in many forms of constipation, as its continual use does not, as a rule, lead to the necessity of enlarging the dose. Its combined action on the bowel and the uterus is of especial value in chlorosis, of which amenorrhoea is an almost constant symptom. The drug is obviously contraindicated in pregnancy and when haemorrhoids are already present. Many well-known patent medicines consist essentially of aloes.
The lign-aloes is quite different from the medicinal aloes. The word is used in the Bible (Numb. xxiv. 6), but as the trees usually supposed to be meant by this word are not native in Syria, it has been suggested that the LXX. reading in which the word does not occur is to be preferred. Lign-aloe is a corruption of the Lat. lignum-aloe, a wood, not a resin. Dioscorides refers to it as agallochon, a wood brought from Arabia or India, which was odoriferous but with an astringent and bitter taste. This may be Aquilaria agallochum, a native of East India and China, which supplies the so-called eagle-wood or aloes-wood, which contains much resin and oil.
ALŌĪDAE, or Alōadae, i.e. Otus and Ephialtes, in ancient Greek legend, the twin-sons of Poseidon by Iphimedeia, wife of Aloeus. They were celebrated for their extraordinary stature and strength. According to Homer (Od. xi. 305), they made war upon the Olympian gods and endeavoured to pile Pelion upon Ossa in order to storm heaven itself; had they reached the age of manhood, their attempt would have been successful, but Apollo destroyed them before their beards began to grow. In the Iliad (v. 365) Ares is imprisoned by them, but delivered by Hermes. Apollodorus says that they succeeded in piling Pelion upon Ossa. Another story is that they were presumptuous enough to seek Artemis and Hera in marriage, and that Artemis caused them to slay each other unintentionally on the island of Naxos, where they were afterwards worshipped as heroes. In punishment for their offences they were bound back to back with snakes to a pillar in the lower world (Hyginus, Fab. 28). The Alōīdae (here connected with ἀλωή, threshing-floor) represent the spirits of the fertile earth and agriculture, conceived of by the Greeks as engaged in combat with the Olympian gods. In contrast to these legends, Pausanias tells us that they were regarded as the first to worship the Muses on Mt. Helicon, while Diodorus represents them as historical personages, princes of Thessaly, who defeated the Thracians in Strongyle, i.e. Naxos, where they made themselves rulers, and subsequently slew one another in a quarrel.
ALOMPRA, ALOUNG P’HOURA (1711–1760), founder of the
last Burmese dynasty, was born in 1711 at Mōtshobo, a small
village 50 m. north-west of Ava. Of humble origin, he had
risen to be chief of his native village when the invasion of Burma
by the king of Pegu in 1752 gave him the opportunity of attaining
to the highest distinction. The whole country had tamely
submitted to the invader, and the leading chiefs had taken the
oaths of allegiance. Alompra, however, with a more independent
spirit, not only contrived to regain possession of his village, but
was able to defeat a body of Peguan troops that had been sent
to punish him. Upon this the Burmese, to the number of a
thousand, rallied to his standard and marched with him upon
Ava, which was recovered from the invaders before the close of
1753. For several years he prosecuted the war with uniform
success. In 1754 the Peguans, to avenge themselves for a severe
defeat at Keoum-nuoum, slew the king of Burma, who was
their prisoner. The son of the latter claimed the throne, and was
supported by the tribe of Quois; but Alompra resisted, being
determined to maintain his own supremacy. In 1755 Alompra
founded the city of Rangoon. In 1757 he had established his
position as one of the most powerful monarchs of the East by
the invasion and conquest of Pegu. Before a year elapsed the
Peguans revolted; but Alompra, with his usual promptitude,
at once quelled the insurrection. The Europeans were suspected
of having instigated the rising, and the massacre of the English
at Negrais in October 1759 is supposed to have been approved by
Alompra after the event, though there is no evidence that he
ordered it. Against the Siamese, who were also suspected of
having abetted the Peguan rebels, he proceeded more openly
and severely. Entering their territory, he was just about to
invest the capital when he was seized with an illness which
proved fatal on the 15th of May 1760. Alompra is one of the
most remarkable figures in modern Oriental history. To undoubted
military genius he added considerable political sagacity,
and he deserves particular credit for his efforts to improve the
administration of justice. His cruelty and deceitfulness were
faults common to all Eastern despots.
ALONE. This adjective or adverb requires no definition for its meaning of “by oneself” or “solitary”; but its etymological history, as simply a combination of the words “all” and “one” is rather curious (compare the Ger. allein). “Lone” is merely a clipped form of the word, and so “lonely.” The New English Dictionary traces the English word back to the year 1300.
ÁLORA, a town of southern Spain in the province of Málaga;
17 m. W.N.W. of Málaga, on the right bank of the river Guadalhorce,
and on the Cordova-Málaga railway. Pop. (1900) 10,525.
Álora, which is an ancient and picturesque town, with several
Moorish ruins, occupies an outlying hill of the Sierra de Tolox,
and overlooks a fertile valley where maize, sugar-cane and date-palms
are cultivated. There are hot sulphurous springs in the
town, which has also a fine climate; and many of the wealthy
families from Málaga reside here in summer. Brandy distilling
is, after agriculture, the chief local industry.
ALOST (Flem. Aalst), a town of Belgium, in the province of East Flanders, situated on the left bank of the Dender; the ancient capital of what was called Imperial Flanders. Pop. (1897) 28,771; (1904) 31,655. Flanders in the feudal period was a fief of the king of France—the count of Flanders being the first of the twelve peers of France; but there was a small strip
