208 



The Philippine Journal of Science 



EFFECTIVENESS OF CHAULMOOGRA OIL 



Again, standards for determining whether an oil is crude or 

 refined are rather arbitrary, and when applied to an oil such as 

 chaulmoogra, where the previous history of the oil is not known, 

 the difficulty of deciding is still more difficult. An expressed oil 

 would carry with it other substances. For example, when the 

 oil from bitter almonds is expressed, a small amount of the amyg- 

 dalin of the nuts is carried with the oil. Power and Lees * have 

 shown that the chaulmoogra seeds and the hydnocarpus seeds all 

 contain small quantities of a cyanogenetic glucoside that they 

 found to be identical with gynocardin, the glucoside present in 

 Gynocardia odorata. 



When the oil of these nuts is expressed, minute amounts of 

 the glucoside doubtless accompany the oil ; therefore the effective- 

 ness of the crude oil may possibly be due to the presence of the 

 cyanogenetic glucoside. The small amount of the glucoside 

 present would account for the slowness of the action of the oil. 

 The small amount of glucoside that may possibly be present in 

 the oils is shown by the nitrogen content of some chaulmoogra 

 oils in Table I. These data illustrate the maximum possible 

 amount that could be present. 



Table I. — Nitrogen content of various chaulmoogra oils. 



No. of sample. » 



Nitrogen. 



Calculated as 

 grynocardin 

 (CisHisOsN 

 +1.5H»0). 





Per cent. 

 0. 01363 

 0.00438 

 0.01380 

 0.01415 

 0.01257 

 0.00670 

 0.01503 

 0.02209 



Per cent. 

 0.350 

 0.113 

 0.355 

 0.364 

 0.323 

 0.172 

 0.386 

 0.568 











6 









For description of samples see Table III. 



CONSTITUTION OF THE OIL 



The acids of the oils of this family of seeds, Taratogenos kwr- 

 zii, 5 Hydnocarpus ivighttiana, H. anthelmintica, 6 H. venenata, 



1 Journ. Chem Soc. London (1905), 87, 349. 



'Power and Gornall, Journ. Chem. Soc. London (1904), 85, 838. 



'Power and Barrowcliff, ibid. (1905), 87, 884. 



'Brill, This Journal, Sec. A, (1916), 11, 75. 



