Cases with Marked Improvement , Becoming Negative Clinically And

Although chaulmoogra oil is the oldest known and most widely used medication in the treatment of leprosy, no uniform criterion for evaluating its therapeutic value has yet been evolved. In all epochs and within the same epoch there have. existed various schools of thought, some enthusiastic defenders of chaulmoogra, and, at the other extreme, the pessimists and disbelievers in its therapeutic value. Henderson (1) has grouped the diverse opinions in the efficacy of chaulmoogra into four types: (a) that it is fully efficacious, (b) that it is efficacious but not infallible, (c) that it has no specific therapeutic action but acts merely as a simple co-agent in improving the general condition of the patient, (d) that it has no therapeutic value whatever in leprosy. To what is due such diversity of opinion upon results obtained from the use of chaulmoogra? Is it attributable to the use of different derivatives of chaulmoogra; to differences in methods of application or in dosages administered, or to differences in clinical types upon which the treatment is used ? We believe that the dosage factor may playa highly important role, but that it is a lack of uniformity in the selection of experimental cases for therapeutic tests with chaulmoogra which is the real cause of the diversity of results obtained, and, consequently, of the variance in opinion upon the therapeutic value of this medication. Such discrepancy is un-