102 
REMARKS ON COD LIVER OIL. 
more care has been extended in preparing it for medicinal use, 
and perhaps the most improved innovation on the old method 
described, is to expose the livers contained in a suitable tin reser- 
voir, heated with steam applied externally by a jacket, until they 
assume the condition of a magma, when this is thrown on a 
strainer, and the mixed oil and water that passes separated and 
purified, as has been before described, with the precaution to act 
on the livers as soon after their removal from the fish as possible, 
and to perform the process with such expedition that the oil is 
not injured by undue exposure to the air. 
The fishermen along shore sell their oil to the store keepers in 
trade, who in turn, as it accumulates, send it to the large dealers 
in the seaport towns. At some of these establishments in Boston 
there are reservoirs, capable of holding many hundreds of gal- 
lons, constructed of stone and cement, in their cellars, in which 
the brown oil is kept separately. As this oil is brought in from 
>the smaller dealers or fishermen, it is emptied into these, 
where it clarifies by subsidence and is pumped up into barrels 
for commerce. The exposure which it undergoes tends to in- 
crease its strong lamp-oil odor, and as a large proportion of the 
brown oil employed in the United States passes through the 
hands of these dealers, it follows that the medical public do not 
receive even this oil in its least repulsive form. The white oil, 
on the contrary, is kept in the barrels into which it is originally 
introduced, and these, if originally tight and pure, form very 
good receptacles. Some of the druggists of Boston, New 
York and Philadelphia, have made special arrangements with 
persons engaged in the codfishery, and who make the oil by the 
improved method, with a view to its use in medicine ; and where 
these persons prove true to their engagements, there is no reason 
why the blandest and purest oil should not be obtained. 
A specimen of pure cod liver oil in my possession, is entirely 
free from the lamp-oil odor, but has the fresh-fishy smell indica- 
tive of its recent and careful preparation. Its sp. grav. is .917. 
at 72° Fahr. Mixed with ordinary sulphuric acid, it is instantly 
changed to a dark red brown transparent color, like tincture of 
kino. Mixed with nitric acid, sp. grav. 1.36 and shaken, it is 
colored instantly of a pinkish cast, which soon becomes brown, 
