AmjJu°iy"Sarm-}  Cod  Liver  Oil.  37 1 
This  is  considered  to  have  been  demonstrated  by  the  super-excitation 
of  appetite  in  animals  brought  under  its  influence. 
As  before  stated  a  portion  of  the  bases  just  described  are  com- 
bined in  the  oil  under  the  form  of  lecithines.  It  is  impossible,  in 
fact,  to  concentrate  an  alcoholic  extract  made  in  presence  of  a 
mineral  acid,  although  dilute,  without  the  gradual  deposition  in  the 
cold  of  a  viscous  acid  to  which  the  bases  were  originally  joined ;  at 
the  same  time  phosphoglyceric  acid  makes  its  appearance.  The 
lecithines  do  not  exist,  in  the  white  or  slightly  colored  oils ;  neither 
do  the  alkaloids,  which  is  considered  to  be  another  proof  that  these 
bases  occur  under  the  form  of  complex  phosphoglyceric  compounds. 
According  to  De  Jongh,  the  brown  oils  contain  per  kilogram 
0-789  gram  of  pre-existing  phosphoric  acid,  removable  by  saponifi- 
cation, while  the  total  phosphoric  acid  obtained  by  oxidation  of  the 
oil  was  1-047  grams,  but  in  the  pale  oil  the  quantities  obtained  were 
respectively  0-913  gram  and  1-397  gram.  It  follows  therefore  from 
these  figures  that  the  phosphoric  acid  and  phosphorus  are  not 
entirely  derived  from  lecithines,  for  the  oils  yielding  the  most  are 
those  that  do  not  contain  phosphoglyceric  compounds.  Moreover, 
the  organic  phosphorus  occurs  in  these  oils  in  a  form  other  than 
that  of  phosphoric  acid  capable  of  combining  with  alkalies  ;  the 
phosphorus  that  becomes  apparent  only  upon  total  oxidation  of  the 
oily  substance  is  sensibly  more  abundant  in  the  pale  oils  free  from 
lecithines.  Consequently,  this  phosphorus  occurs  in  all  the  oils, 
pale  or  brown,  in  a  form  other  than  that  of  lecithines ;  and  since  it 
is  not  fully  saturated  with  oxygen  and  constitutes  part  of  a  complex 
organic  molecule,  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  it  is  essentially 
assimilable  and  suitable  to  the  reparation  of  tissue. 
Morrhuic  acid  (C9H13N03)  is  peculiar  to  cod  liver  oil,  from  which  it 
is  deposited  slowly  and  gradually  in  the  cold,  more  rapidly  when 
the  acidulated  alcoholic  extracts  are  concentrated  by  heat.  It  fol- 
lows the  bases  in  the  various  processes  of  extraction,  and  appears  to 
be  united  with  the  principal  of  them  in  very  instable  combination. 
In  order  to  separate  simply  the  morrhuic  acid  it  suffices  to  exhaust 
the  oil  with  hydrochloric  acid  diluted  with  twenty  times  its  volume 
of  water,  separate  and  filter  the  supernatant  liquor,  saturate  with 
potassium  carbonate  and  concentrate  in  vacuo  at  45 0  to  500.  The 
acidulated  residue  is  taken  up  by  strong  alcohol,  and  upon  evaporat- 
ing the  alcohol  and  adding  water,  the  acid  is  precipitated  as  a  brown 
