Anthraquinones are understood traditionally as laxative agents though there are many schools of thought as to the relative hidden values they may contain. To a degree they are still mystery ingredients. Believed to be redoubtable pain-killers, we have also come to learn that D'Amico, Benigne, and others in the early '50's found them additionally to be valuable bactericidal agents in the tradition of antibiotics with many of the antibiotic properties, minus the toxicity and plus the virucidal capacities discovered first by Lorenzetti et al., and confirmed later by Sims and Zimmerman.
We have already learned that many anthraquinones exhibit measurable levels of toxicity on their own. Yet within the sublime chemistry of the Aloe Vera plant, they are non-toxic.
Our brief studies of the anthraquinone complex and related ingredients indicate significantly that their only measureable activities are in consort each with the other; furthermore, this interactive relationship carries specifically into the other ingredients of Aloe Vera gel. Then again, that is precisely the problem. Few people understand the meaning. And nowhere is it perhaps more evident that in the evaluations of trace minerals.
ref: Silent Healer (pg. 50) by Bill Coats R.Ph., with Robert Ahola