The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-01-07
SHORTAGE OF COD LIVER OIL

Reasons for Some Medicine Famines.
 It is not often that genuine famine occurs in medicine When there is a scarcity of any particular drug it As | generally the result of spectators at i tempting to corner the article by pur- chasing all available. supplies and starv- ing the market until the price had risen to suit them. But occasionally a true famine occurs, and at the present mom- ent one is ha aypening in such an im- portant and widely used article that it l is no exaggeration to say it is public calamity. We refer to the scarcity of that most useful medicine, cod liver oil.
 Owing to the almost total failure of ! the cod fishes last spring, the supply is not nearly equal to the normal demand and the price of the best medicinal oil has gone up 800 per cent. Oil which some little while ago could be bought on the wholse market for 70 shillings O. so ehillings barrel can now scarcely be obtained for GET.
 The best cod liver oil is obtained from the Norwegian fisheries, and hundreds of fishermen depend on the result for their living. The failure of the fishing last season, due to the migra- ton of the codfish, has been g most serious thing for them and their families
 The failure of the oil supply. with it's greatly enhanced price in consequence, has also been a most serious thing to thousands of poor folk in this country whose pockets have not been deep enough to bear the increased cost, Through the coming winter the effects will be still more severely felt. Even the London hospitals for consumption have been compelled to discontine the supply to patients in all but a. very few cases. All kinds of substitutes are be- ing tried, but so far nothing has been found equal to the genuine oil.
 | Some few years ago. when the Madhi was devastating the Soudan and all the surrounding country, there was almost a total failure of the supply of gum acacia, or gum arabic, as it is often called. This is an essential ingredient in the conpounding of many medicines, and especially in the making of medical lozenges, and the inconvenience and loss caused by this famine were great. There was any quantity of gum in the country waiting on the trees to be pick ed, but all the natives had either been driven off or were soldering with the I Mahdi, and 1t was not until about a | year after that Lord Kitchener had finally smashed him up that regular supplies began to come through. e ,%y1 sxf a ,aH hxy | speculation we may quote the attempt made few years ago to corner the sup lply of camphor. The late Col. North was the moving spirit in this enterprise, and for some considerable time it. looked like being successful. But several causes combined to knock the bottom out of l the corner. Tn the first place, the stocks 1 in hand held out much longer than the conspirators had anticipated. Next, | new sources of supply were discovered, notably in the island of Borneo; and, 1 finally, camphor is not an article that can be kept indefinitely, except with the greatest of precaution. So, although the colonel caused temporary sacrcity and a great rise in price, in the end he was beaten and lost thousands of pounds over the deal.
 1 Another way in which a medicine famine may be caused is by failure in the crop brought about by bad wealth CT or other circumstances Owing to the wet season there will be a great shortage in this years supply of pepper mint, and the prices of oil distilled from 1 the plant and for menthol obtained from the oil, are sure to advance. The bulk of the finest peppermint oil is pro- duced by the firm of H. c. Hotchkiss, in the state of Michigan, and this one firm practically controls the market in the best qualities.
 | Another valuable drug that will prob- ably be very scarce and dear for the next year or two is cascara bark. One small district, that of Corvallis, in the state of Oregon practically controls the worlds supply of cascara. Reports I from there are most unfavorable, and the price is rapidly advancing. A curious fact about caseara bark is that l it does not yield it's greatest virtues un- l til it has been taken from the trees and stored at least a year.-Tit Bits, Lon-
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