Sabila – Aloe Vera Linn.

sabila or aloe vera

Sabila – Aloe Vera Linn.

Aloe humilis Blanco/ Aloe perfoliata vera Linn./ Aloe elongata Murr./ Aloe vulgaris Lam.

Local names: Dilang-boaia (Bik.); dilang-halo (Bis.); sabila (Tag.); sabila-pina (Tag.); aloe (Engl.).

Sabila is cultivated for ornamental and medicinal purposes in the Philippines. It is an introduced species, being a native of Africa. It also occurs in sub-temperate and tropical regions generally, where it is often cultivated.

The stems of sabila grow from 30 to 40 centimeters in height. The leaves are fleshy, mucilaginous, and succulent, 20 to 50 centimeters long, 5 to 8 centimeters wide; gradually narrowed and the base, pale green, and irregular, white-clothed, and the margins having weak prickles. The inflorescence is erect, and usually twice the height of the plant. The flowers are 2 to 3 centimeters long, yellow, with the segments about equaling the oblong tube.

Wehmer records that the leaves contain barbaloin 25 per cent, isobarbaloin 0.5 per cent, emodin, resin, traces of volatile oil; in the Sicilian variety, with sicaloiu. Read adds that they contain cinnamic acid, d-arakinose and oxydase.

Bruntz and Jaloux reports that the extract of the leaves is official in the Austrian (5-7); British (1-4); Chilean (2); Chinese; Croatico-Slavonica (1,2); Danish (3); Dutch (2); Finnish (1-5); French (1,3-5); German (2); Hungarian (1-3); Italian (1-3); Japanese (1-3); Mexican (1-4); Portuguese (1-3); Rumanian (2,3); Russian (1-4); Serbian (1,2); Swedish (5-7); Swiss (3); U.S.P. (1-10); Venezuelan (1,2) Pharmacopoeias.

The juice of the fleshy leaves is usually mixed with gugo by the Filipino women to prevent falling of the hair and to cure baldness. According to Father Sta. Maria the juice from the leaves mixed with wine preserves the hair. He also states that the juice mixed with milk cures dysentery and pains in the kidney. Guerrero reports that the leaves are used by Filipino herbalist to poultice edema of beriberi patients. The alcoholic tincture of this inspissated juice is used in India and in the Antilles to cure bruises or contusions and ecchymosis.

Aloe vera is the source of the acibar of the Barbados or of Curazo. Concerning the use of the drug, Burkill says that the bitter aloe, in small doses, serves as a tonic in larger doses, as an aperient, and in still larger doses, drastically so; it is, also, emmenagogue and cholagogue. It has became the basis, in Europe, of most ‘patent’ pills, as well as cleaning much open use in medicine. The supplies are drawn chiefly from eastern and southeastern Africa, and also from the West Indies. Dey states that in small doses it is a stomachic tonic, and in large doses, a purgative. Pittier reports that in Costa Rica the mucilaginous pulp of the leaves is used as purgative.

Doctor Crewe described his method of treating burns and scalds with the use of Aloe vera. He employed an ointment of which the active constituent is the powder of this Aloe. The ointment is made by mixing 2 grams of the powdered aloe and about 2 grams of mineral oil in an ounce of white Vaseline.

Source: Bureau of Plant Industry, Department of Agriculture