CHEMICAL SCIENCE.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5143, 24 June 1927, Page 4

CHEMICAL SCIENCE.

CONCENTRATING COD-LIVER OIL.

£4OO A QUART MEDICINE.

One of the many wonderful achievements of modern science, the concentration of 2000 quarts of cod-liver oil into one quart, which contains all of the curative vitamin D, was described to a London Daily Mail reporter by the chief chemist of the makers of this product.

The diatoms, microscopic vegetable bodies living on the surface of the sea, absorb the sunlight and elaborate vitamins. These are eaten by the minute animals called plankton ; the plankton are eaten by the smaller fish, which in turn constitute: the food of the cod-fish.

In this way the bottled sunshine is handed on from the diatoms to the cod, which stores the material in its liver.

The virtues of cod-liver oil reside in its very minute content of vitamins, and in recent years chemists have been working on the problem of separating the vitamins from the‘oil.

This has been effected in the case of the product known as Ostelin, which is made in Aberdeen in the following way : Into a large tank 3000' gallons of cod-liver oil are poured. After thorough mixture (for different samples vary in their content of vitamin) the oil is drawn into a special apparatus and there put through several chemical processes which remove the oily matter and leave only the non-oily part, amounting to 30 t® 60 gallons. This is further concentrated until finally only l-200th part of the oil is left, containing all the vitamin.

It is. put up in quart canisters, each worth from £3OO to £4OO, about £1 a teaspoonful, and brought to London.

One drop of this is equal in vitamin content to 33 teaspoonfuls *f cod-liver oil, and as it would not be practicable l to measure out l-33rd of a teaspoonful, the preparation is diluted with glycerine or mixed with malt or made up in tablets. When diluted with glycerine, a dose of four drops is equal to a., teaspoonful of cod-liver oil. As this is tasteless and can be taken on a piece of sugar, children owe a debt of gratitude to chemical science.

[This item from the “Daily Mail” gains added interest from the fact that Ostelin is ,a preparation which is produced in the Glaxo laboratories of a well-known New Zealand firm.]