Aloe gel has been used to help heal cuts, scrapes, burns and bruises for perhaps 3,000 years. In very early times, its use was highly recommended by the physicians of the day as a remedy for all manner of things, including a litany of common or odd complaints that were not otherwise understood or curable with the materia medica and therapeutics then available.

Among the staunch proponents of Aloe was the Greek physician, Dioscorides, who recommended Aloe for practically everything for which there was no other cure. The Bible speaks of Aloe in a number of passages, calling it the �€œbitter herb.�€� There is some doubt that the references were to Aloe vera. And legend has it that some 2,300 years ago, Aristotle urged Alexander the Great to attack and conquer the island of Socotra in order to secure a reliable supply of Aloe to treat the wounds of his injured soldiers.

No one is sure when Aloe was first used medicinally, but it is known that Chinese doctors were prescribing it at least 3,000 years ago and that King Solomon was particularly taken with it. As the story is told, many of the beauties of these very early days owed their fine skin and beautiful hair to the use of Aloe. Certainly possible, if not provable at this late date.

The Greek word for Aloe was probably Aloeh, which translates as a shining bitter substance. Aloe vera, Latin for True Aloe, is known in Arabic and Egyptian as sabr, meaning bitter medicine. These words and their definitions point out the diverse locations in which folkloric medicine was practiced with Aloe in Southern Asia and the areas bordering the Mediterranean Sea.

Closer to home, the Indians of the Americas used Aloe extensively to treat their skin disorders, calling Aloe �€œthe wand of heaven,�€� and believing that anyone touched by the gel of the plant would be healed. Did it work? Those same tribes still use it today - you decide.

These many applications of Aloe were tried, of course, without any hard scientific evidence to prove Aloe�€™s healing powers. It was all trial and error. If something worked, people kept on using it. Many in the scientific community had serious reservations about Aloe�€™s ability to heal anything at all. In their view, the so-called �€œproof�€� was all anecdotal, and therefore, greatly suspect.

Even in recent years, the tendency among some doctors has been to doubt any �€œnatural�€� therapeutic agent unless it has been thoroughly tested in clinical trials. Naturally, clinicals don�€™t happen very often to �€œnatural�€� products, since the cost of doing so is astronomically high, and very few pharmaceutical companies are willing to expend the resources necessary to test something they cannot patent. This is understandable, if frustrating, to those who believe in the efficacy of the Aloe vera plant.

When you consider that many of today�€™s most effective medications are derived from nature - penicillin, quinine and digitalis for example - it is difficult to understand why the same scientific tests and standards took so many years to be applied to Aloe.

In fact, some observers have suggested that, if Aloe vera were discovered today, it might well be hailed, like penicillin, a true �€œmiracle drug.�€� Only time will tell, but expectations in the scientific community are high, and research continues worldwide.