Studies on the Molecular Distillation of Whale Liver Oils-III

The present paper deals with the biological activities of vitamin A in fin whale liver oil and the distillate distilled at 10-3 mmHg. The results obtained are summarized as follows: 1. The biological potency (47, 800 U. S. P. units) of the whale liver oil was found to be higher than that (39, 900) assayed by spectrophotometric method of OSER, wheras the distillate showed nearly the same potency (138, 600) biologically as spectrophotometrically. 2. Although the apparent increase of vitamin A by molecular distillation is, therefore, amounted to 123 % spectrophotometrically, that estimated by biological methed is only 85 %, which is still quite higher than those reported previously by other authors.