544 The Philippine Journal of Science 1923 



important from the therapeutic standpoint, namely: The chem- 

 ical work has been confined to less than half of the oils which, 

 from botanical and other reasons, may be confidently placed in 

 the chaulmoogra group. The various constituents have not 

 been determined quantitatively. Unknown constituents are pres- 

 ent in probably all of the oils and may form a large part of 

 certain oils. 



One of the aims of the chemical laboratory at Culion Leper 

 Colony is to take a part in remedying these deficiencies in our 

 knowledge of chaulmoogra, and it is hoped that the present 

 study will be found a step in that direction. Our field was 

 necessarily limited to oils which we were able to obtain and the 

 following objectives were held in mind : 



1. Establishment of criteria for the recognition of each oil 

 if possible, and for the detection of adulteration. 



2. Sufficient separation of each oil into its constituents as 

 would enable its evaluation as a potential source of hydnocarpic, 

 chaulmoogric, or some unknown fatty acid in case any of these 

 should be found by clinicians particularly valuable therapeuti- 

 cally. 



3. Determination of economically important considerations, 

 such as yield of oil, keeping qualities of seeds, etc. 



The stuay has included work on a few commercial oils, but has 

 been chiefly devoted to samples obtained in the laboratory from 

 seeds of known species. Ten species were included: Tarak- 

 togenos kurzu, seven species of Hydnocarpus, Pangium edule, 

 and Gynocardia odorata. Taraktogenos kurzii is the true chaul- 

 moogra, but the genus Hydnocarpus is very closely allied both 

 botanically and chemically to the genus Taraktogenos. Hydno- 

 carpus oils are, therefore, included in the chaulmoogra group 

 and some of them may be as effective as or possibly more effective 

 against leprosy than chaulmoogra oil. Three of the Hydno- 

 carpus ^species studied are found only in the Philippines, two 

 are Indian species, one is from Borneo, and one from Indo-China. 

 ^ynocardia odorata and probably Pangium edule cannot be 

 classed m the chaulmoogra group, but were included in the study 

 to clear up certain errors and discrepancies existing in the litera- 

 ture concerning their relation to this group. Only three of these 

 species are additional to the list in Table 1, but we hope to be 

 able to obtain other species and extend the work. 



