Am.  jour.  Pharm. )        Chaidmooqra  Oil  Derivatives.  d?> 
January,  1921.    J  J  ^° 
See,  it  is  colorless.  Now  I  dip  it  into  the  ammonia;  it  instantly 
turns  yellow. 
You  ask  the  name  of  this  material.  I  call  it  Eldrin.  But  it 
may  have  been  long  known  elsewhere  and  recorded  under  a  dif- 
ferent name  or  different  terms. 
CHAULMOOGRA  OIL  DERIVATIVES  * 
Chaulmoogra  oil  is  one  of  the  few  members  of  the  group  of  fatty  ^ 
oils  which  are  believed  to  have  distinct  physiological  effects  outside 
of  their  nutritive  value.  The  fatty  oils  are  of  great  physiological 
importance,  but,  heretofore,  chiefly  in  relation  to  nutrition  and  the 
general  metabolism  of  the  body.  In  a  series  of  papers  from  the 
Wellcome  Research  Laboratory,  by  Power  and  his  collaborators,  the 
constitution  of  chaulmoogra  oil  and  some  of  the  closely  related  oils 
was  elucidated.  They  discovered  a  new  series  of  fatty  acids  repre- 
sented by  two  members — chaulmoogric  acid,  Ci8H3202,  and  hydno- 
carpic  acid,  C16H2s02.  These  acids  differ  from  any  other  known 
fatty  acids  in  that  they  rotate  the  plane  of  polarized  light  to  a 
notable  degree — chaulmoogric  acid  (a)d  =  +62. i°  and  hydno- 
carpic  acid  (a)d  —  +68°.  ^he  studies  on  their  constitution  indi- 
cated that  each  of  these  acids  contains  a  five-carbon-ring  nucleus. 
Both  of  these  acids  were  isolated  from  chaulmoogra  oil  derived  from 
the  seeds  of  7 araktogenos  kurzii,  and  also  from  the  oil  of  closely 
related  species  belonging  to  the  genus  Hydnocarpus.  Power  and 
his  co-workers  did  not  concern  themselves  with  the  therapeutic  use 
of  chaulmoogra  oil. 
It  would  appear  possible  that  the  distinctive  action  of  chaul- 
moogra oil,  as  heretofore  reported,  may  be  due  either  to  the  glycerides 
of  the  unique  fatty  acids  of  chaulmoogra  oil  or  to  the  presence  of 
some  other  oil-soluble  constituent  not  a  glyceride.  The  first  step 
in  the  attempt  to  identify  the  active  agents  would  be  the  separating 
of  chaulmoogra  oil  into  fractions  and  the  use  of  these  fractions  on 
groups  of  lepers.  The  separating  of  the  glyceride  mixtures  which 
make  up  the  various  vegetable  fatty  oils  is  very  difficult;  the  fatty 
*  Abstract  from  Public  Health  Reports,  Volume  35,  No.  34,  the  United 
States  Public  Health  Service,  prepared  by  Joseph  W.  England. 
