265 THE JOURNAL OF PHARMACOLOGY. 



the nutrient and digestive function, we observe its prompt alterative 

 effects, we must be convinced that we are deahng with a therapeutic 

 agent which, while not thoroughly understood, has for ages been of 

 incalculable value to the human race and one whose virtues can probably 

 never be thoroughly explained. 



Its nerve-building energies are perhaps in a greater part due to the 

 phosphorus it contains, making it extremely valuable for shattered ner- 

 vous systems as well as in rachitic cases; its prompt and thorough al- 

 terative effects observable in the strumous, scrofulous, phthisical and 

 rheumatic are due probably to the continued iodine and bromine, 

 as well as perhaps to other constituents the therapeutic value of which 

 is not known. 



When we try to compare the virtues of the old oil with that now 

 manufactured, I think there are several facts which indicate that the 

 former was therapeutically the more efficacious. In my boyhood I 

 took cod-liver oil daily for months at a time extending over a period 

 of several years. In those days the two oils were in competition, the 

 steam-prepared, yellow oil was the more pleasant to the taste and to 

 smell, but our "family doctor,'' as well as all of our experienced friends, 

 advised the old, browner, more odorous and more fishy oil ; the conse- 

 quence was I began early to enquire why there was any need to take 

 the more disagreeable oil. All I learned was tbat its effects were 

 more prompt and more thorougb, that in the opinion of the elder 

 doctors of that day the new oil was deficient in some of the healing 

 virtues of the old, and their belief was so universal that I early became 

 convinced that this was truth and not merely a prejudice. 



Tending to the same conclusion, if we look over the medical liter- 

 ature of the period of i8'55 to 1870, we find that as the old oil gave 

 way to the new, numerous manufacturers placed preparations of cod- 

 liver oil on the market purporting to be fortified with one or more of 

 its active principles, especially do we notice iodised oil, phosphori.-:ed 

 oil (3), used in varying strengths up to ^ grain to the ounce of oil, and 

 brominised oil. It is significant, to say the least, that tbis flood of 

 fortified oils should appear at this time immediately after the adoption of 

 the new steam process. It would seem that some lack in the new oil 

 must have been detected at once. This endeavor to improve on the 

 nutriment and alterative virtues of the new cod-liver oil continues to 

 quite an extent even up to the present day. 



Between the new and the old oils there are but two fundamental 

 differences. (1) The old oils contained a much greater proportion 

 of the decomposition products, sucb as the alkaloids (4), than the new 

 oil. These alkaloids are by some considered as abnormal (5) and by 



