21,1 Perkins: Drugs for the Treatment of Leprosy 5 
The organism repels the bacillary invasion due to the concurrence of 
a larger number of defensive elements as the leucocytes which possess 
phagocytic powers to destroy and exterminate the bacilli. In order that 
the organism may acquire a greater number of leucocytes for its defense, 
a stimulant or reactive is needed to provoke leucocytic hypergenesis, such 
as we are able to acquire from the presence and action of a fatty substance 
as the oil of chaulmoogra which also contains gynocardic acid, an alterative, 
acting upon the system as all other organic acids. 
Other leprologists assume a similar, indirect effect. 
Rogers, on the other hand, believes the effect to be direct, 
but not confined to chaulmoogra oil. He states** that there 
is nothing absolutely specific against leprosy in the products 
of chaulmoogra oil and— 
that the sodium salts of the unsaturated fatty acids of these two oils 
[chaulmoogra and cod-liver oils] act in some way on the coating of the 
acid-fast bacilli, that of tuberculosis having been shown to contain palmitic 
and other unsaturated fatty acids. During the past year [1918] sodium 
morrhuate has been used with very promising results in tuberculosis by 
several careful observers to whom I have supplied it, and morphological 
changes have been noted in the tubercle bacilli in the sputum. A wide 
field of investigation has thus been opened out, as it appears to be possible 
that the organisms of other chronic diseases, including that of syphilis, 
might possibly be broken up in the system by similar methods. 
By “sodium morrhuate” Rogers means the sodium salts of 
the principal fatty acids of cod-liver oil. He has later used 
successfully also ethyl esters made from cod-liver oil and so- 
dium salts from soya-bean oil.'® 
The point which seems important to Rogers is that chaul- 
moogric and hydnocarpic acids are unsaturated; that is, they 
have the power of combining with iodine, bromine, hydrogen, 
and oxygen by direct addition of these elements; whereas a 
saturated fatty acid, like palmitic, for example, is comparatively 
inert chemically. Unsaturation is also a property of the acids 
in cod-liver, soya-bean, and many other oils. 
While Rogers’s theory is not supported by such definite ex- 
perimental evidence as that of Walker, yet the fact remains 
that sodium morrhuate has an effect in leprosy and tuberculosis 
very similar to that of the chaulmoogra preparations. Walker’s 
conclusions are therefore not strictly correct, but they at least 
furnish a scientific starting point toward the solution of the 
problem of leprosy treatment. 
* Rogers, L., Brit. Med. Journ. 1 (1919) 147. 
* Rogers, L., Ind. Med. Gaz. 55 (1920) 127. 
