| Show ar aorl oil JL 00 N S wd J r aw WA V nw zava r 0 r 3 7 by JOHN DICKINSON SHERMAN J F ROCK has returned to washington from slam siam with specimens I 1 and seeds of 0 tile the tree kur zil all which the world has hailed literally as the tree of alft for the leper Is chaulmoogra oil derived from the seeds of nt this siamese jungle tree it cure for leprosy it is 1 too soon to tay gay since there la Is no let on which i positive utterance in the affirmative can be given but this much has been bbown bo conclusively chaulmoogra oil contains one or more agents which exert a marked therapeutic action in many case basei of leprosy there have been many apparent cures are they real and permanent in that remains to the seen but it Is evident that modern mildern medicine now lies has an agent nt at its disposal dosal which gives promise for the control of the dreaded disease professor rock formerly of the university of hawaii made the alie trip to the siamese jungles for the united states department of agriculture it Is purposed to provide a permanent supply of the oil for the treatment of leprosy professor rocks seeds and young trees have been distributed among various experiment sta stations tiong notably in florida maryland and california professor rock says that with mith one exception he Is so far as Is known the first white man to penetrate tile the region of slam where he obtained the specimens of the other white man seems to be known except that he Is an amateur botanist named kerr the siamese Sla inese however visit the jungles where grow grom the to enus trees once every three years 0 to o secure the seeds for chaulmoogra oil it Is a wild mild country full of dangerous animals the natives have known of the beneficial properties of the oil in leprosy lor for hundreds of years but handle the oil in such a crude way that they do not got its full effect unclean V I 1 Is the pitiful cry of the leper that has been beard in all parts of the world since biblical times the dread disease gets its name from the greek word lepro 11 which means meang scaly it Is caused by the bacillus learae it has always been bell believed eved contagious and until recent years incurable it ling has been considered a particularly dread disease because of the terrible disfigurements disfigure ments it causes probably the origin find home of leprosy Is the far last east but at one time it ft was widespread in europe it Is still found in quantity in france russia Itus sla norway way turkey ant and portugal it Is estimated that there ore are 1500 lepers in the united states most mos 0 of f whom are undetected and theredo therefore re it Is only the other day that the wife of a well known officer of the united states army wag vai found to be sull suffering ering from froin a mild form of leprosy and was sent for treatment to the government lepro borlum in louisiana Rece recently tile the british government requisitioned the united states tor for chaill ra oil for the treatment of several hundred bu adred sufferers on the island of tri trinidad 13 idad portugal probably possesses pose eases tile greatest number of lepers of any european country foreigners are shocked by the hight of disfigured lepers of both sexes begging in the streets and selling acs and sweets but portugal seldom gets excited over her lepers about once a generation gen cration somebody insists that something ought to li ha done for thern them or with them it if leprosy can be cured or controlled troll ed the result Is due to work done by ilia united states public health service ben ire this work hag haa been going on for tile last fifteen years principally pa 11 Y in the kallal hospital hawaii the Ka laupapa leper colony Is sita situated on a promontory of the island of 0 0 die ja I 1 molokai Mol okal connected with mith the main portion of 0 the island only by a single pass through precipitous cliffs life there Is anything but what might be expected patients observe all public holidays their fourth of july celebrations brat ions are jubilant and they have orchestras and bands movies and amateur theatricals sixty five per cent of the patients at the Ka laupapa leper settlement will be discharged on parole within two years in the opinion of dr IV J Good goodhue litle for nineteen years resident physician there tills this estimate Is 19 based on results already obtained with the chaulmoogra oil prepared in the laboratories of the university of hawaii bruni A recent joint report by dr J T mcdonald McDo of the leprosy investigation ti station in hawaii and dr A L dean president of the university of hawaii the following concise con conclusions may be drawn as to what nhat the experimentation by the united states public health service in the treatment of leprosy lias has shown the injection of the ethyl esters of the fatty acids of oil usually leads to a rapid improvement in the clinical symptoms of leprosy in many cases the lesions disappear except for scars anil and permanent injuries and the leprosy bacillus can no longer be demonstrated st it has been sufficiently established that chaulmoogra oil contains one or more agents which exert esert a marked therapeutic action in ninny cases of leprosy it cannot be said yet that the disease Jl ease Is cured since there Is 14 no test adequate to establish such a verdict whether or not the apparent cures are real and permanent it Is evident that there Is a valuable agent for tile the control of the disease the chaulmoogra ra oil treatment hai bar been for the last fifteen years rears the subject of experimentation by the united states public health service what has thus far been accomplished has justified the high expectation of surgeon general geneal hugh S dimming cumming of the I 1 public health service and ills corpa corp of assistants prominent among those having an active hand in the experiments are dr J W ky the assistant surgeon general dr george IV McCoy the director of tile the hygiene laboratory dr J T mcdonald of the leprosy investigation station in hawaii and dr A L dean president of the university of hawaii in honolulu since 1905 1005 the lie bervice lies has maintained bained a leprosy investigation station A 0 0 in the Ha hawaiian wallan IsAin islands ds which ch hasl bas conducted intensive studies in I 1 the ill alm ease said dr ky in the course of this work the action ofa ot chaulmoogra oil in the treatment 0 oft leprosy has been very closely studied U chaulmoogra oil which Is a an aa oil fr from the seeds of an oriental tr tree e T r k 1 kurzie has been r reputed e pate d f tor a good many years to have a beneficial be action in leprosy I 1 the difficulty in its use however lay in me ile fact that when given b by mouth it was nauseating and offen offensive siv to the stomach and when allen injected intramuscularly tra muscularly was extremely painful and very slowly absorbed various modifications of chaulmoogra oil were studied by the public health service among them a mixture suggested b by dr helser of the service conta containing inin I 1 chaulmoogra oil camphorated camph orated oil an and later olive oil was added and ana gual acol was mas substituted for the rei re i sorcin results obtained by the latteri latter mixture were so favorable that pr pro j fessor dean president find and professor of chemistry in the university ci ot hawaii was led to the belief 06 chaulmoogra oil might contain certain active principles which could ba b isolated and might be administered administer with more favorable results I 1 i the work of dr ilo power of A welcome research laborio laboratory on ani th constitution of chaulmoogra oil and its congeners conveners cong eners gave some hope of this for they showed that in this oil there was a new series of fatty acids chael add acid and acid which blab differed from other known fatty eeds by having the property of rotating a beam of polarized light these acids however are solids and kence unsuited to hypodermic ad minis ministration ration As a result of a serle series of experiments professor dean determined that the ethyl esters of these thes acids are thin fluid oils which len lend themselves readily to injection and tire are readily absorbed these the ethyl ester derivatives of epaul moogda oil have now been in use a ai the united states public health service leprosy investigation station R at kalihi in the Ha hawaiian wallan islands fo toi some three ears and the results havi have been very encouraging during the thai period some HO lepers have beer been paroled and returned to their families the disease apparently arrested the effect of this treatment be haa been so encouraging that now man many persons afflicted with mith leprosy havn hav voluntarily presented themselves fo foi treatment to the public health servie service in n hawaii whereas in past years since the laws of the ter territorial rl tor I 1 al boa bracil of health provided for the segregation of lepers all persons persona who were buffe suffering with the disease endeavored I 1 hide from the authorities in order the that they might not be separated from theli thel families besides the investigation station at al KaIl kallal lil the public health service also alsa oper operates ates a national a at t I 1 carille la which at present house some lepers vie the ire are being increased so its as to provid provide for or 71 additional beds the treatment treat MeD with oil derivatives has been ean begun at this institution |
