AmNo°vU"'i92hiarm'  \  Therapeutic  Action  of  Cod  Liver  Oil.  757 
CONCERNING  THE  THERAPEUTIC  ACTION  OF  SOME 
DERIVATIVES  OF  COD  LIVER  OIL  * 
By  Oscar  Berghausen,  B.  A.,  M.  D.,  and  Louis  A.  Steinkoenig, 
Ch.  E.,  Cincinnati,  Ohio. 
Historical. 
The  fatty  oils  have  had  a  wide  therapeutic  application  espe- 
cially in  the  treatment  of  leprosy.  Chaulmoogra  oil  derived  from 
the  seeds  of  Taraktogenos  kurzii,  was  used  for  many  years  at  the 
Molokai  Settlement,  and  previous  to  1865  by  physicians  in  India  in 
the  treatment .  of  leprosy.  An  excellent  historical  review  oi  the 
chaulmoogra  oil  treatment  of  leprosy  was  published  by  George  W. 
McCoy.1  Power  and  his  collaborators  2  discovered  a  new  series 
of  fatty  acids  represented  by  two  members — chaulmoogric  acid, 
C18H3202,  and  hydnocarpic  acid,  C16H2402,  which  they  prepared 
from  chaulmoogra  oil. 
The  report  of  Dr.  Victor  G.  Heiser  3  caused  renewed  interest 
in  this  mode  of  therapy  and  seemed  to  show  that  there  were  one  or 
more  active  principles  which  had  a  specific  action  in  leprosy  and  that 
this  agent  was  more  effective  when  given  hypodermically  or  intra- 
muscularly than  when  taken  by  mouth.  Sir  Leonard  Rogers  used 
the  sodium  salts  of  acids  derived  from  chaulmoogra  oil,  using  the 
fractions  separated  by  Ghosh.4 
In  a  more  recent  publication  Sir  Leonard  Rogers  5  describes  the 
use  of  gynocardate  of  soda  and  morrhuate  of  soda,  the  latter  refer- 
ring to  the  sodium  soap  of  the  fatty  acids  prepared  from  cod  liver 
oil.  Rogers  suggests  that  "other  unsaturated  fatty  acids  may  also 
be  expected  to  yield  effective  preparations  against  the  acid-fast 
bacilli  of  both  leprosy  and  tuberculosis. "  McDonald  and  Dean  6 
later  published  results  using  distilled  esters  of  the  fatty  acidsx  of 
chaulmoogra  oil. 
sodium  morrhuate. 
Becoming  interested  in  this  subject  we  determined  to  study  the 
therapeutic  value  of  sodium  morrhuate  and  the  hitherto  undescribed 
mercury  salts  of  morrhuic  acid.   A.  Gautier  and  L.  Mourgues  7  ex- 
*Read  before  the  Daniel  Drake  Society,  Cincinnati,  Ohio,  June,  1921. 
