Along the North Atlantic: the Medicinal Stench of Cod Liver Oil

cod liver oil

There are some liquids in our pantries which we rarely drink. They are fundamental foodstuffs, but not true beverages. Vinegar and oil are the standouts, with various sauces deriving from them with tang, spice, and sweetness. Generally, no one has a tall glass of canola oil or takes a shot of apple cider vinegar. Liquids such as these are better classified as ingredients, but both oil and vinegar have a place in our drinking tradition as medicines. 

These fluids have properties which make them useful to the human body. Vinegar, a fermentation gone sour, is an excellent solvent by which herbal compounds can be delivered to an ailing drinker. In fact, vinegar may have been the first antibiotic manufactured by man. Oil, on the other hand, is a necessary fat in our diet and can deliver vitamins as well. Humans have used both of these ingredients in their pantries and medicine cabinets since before written history.

In the world of ingestible oils, one variety has enjoyed meteoric fame in the last 150 years. This oil is rarely an ingredient in foods. Instead, we consume it by the spoonful. Cod liver oil. The oil from the liver of the Atlantic Cod–a strange thing to come across, and even stranger to ingest. But fishing communities along the coast of the North Atlantic have long relied on the ocean’s once bountiful supply of codfish to satisfy nearly all of their nutritional needs. No part of the fish would go to waste, so of course they learned to use the liver and its oil. 

cod liver oil factory
Medicinal fish oil factory on Johnson Island, Swan's Island, Maine ca. 1910. Making the oil on an island would keep the smell of boiling livers away from residents. FromSwan's Island Historical Society https://www.mainememory.net/artifact/68458

Traditionally, cod liver oil was made one of two ways. Firstly, a whole heap of cod livers could be piled up on top of each other and let to sit. Gravity would force the oils out of the livers which could then be collected. Alternatively, the livers could be boiled in a pot. The tissue breaks down and the fats rise to the top. The fisherman can then scoop the oil off the surface and accumulate it in a vat. (Chrisman)

From Scandinavia, where seafaring Norwegians made and drank quantities of cod liver oil for several centuries, the practice traveled to the south. Brits were aware of it as early as 1771 when a physician named Thomas Percival endorsed its healing ability. (Grad) Germans began to encounter it as a medicine in the early 1800s. It had entered the discourse of British medicine more broadly by the middle of that century.

In 1784, a text was published dealing directly with the oil and its medicinal properties. An interesting drink is prescribed consisting of “one ounce of cod liver oil, 40 drops of lye, half an ounce of peppermint water for a draught. By this combination a liquid soap, not very unpleasant, is produced, which may be readily decomposed by the addition of a teaspoonful of the juice of lemons.” (“Observations on the Medical Uses of Oleum Jecoris Aselli, or Cod Liver Oil.” 3 Sept. 1784) Back in the 18th century, cod liver oil would have been far more crude and far more pungent than modern versions; it was necessary to make a fishy cocktail out of it. 

At this time, the oil bore the scientific name oleum jecoris Aselli as it entered the medical discourse. But it was entirely foreign to most Europeans of the 1700s. According to the author, “the salutary properties of [the oil] have been little experienced beyond the vicinage of Manchester.” (“Observations on the Medical Uses of Oleum Jecoris Aselli, or Cod Liver Oil.” 3 Sept. 1784)

cod liver oil trading card

In the mid 1800s, the broader medical communities in both Europe and the Americas began to pay closer attention to cod liver oil. The 1840s saw New England and the Canadian provinces of the Atlantic, particularly New Foundland, expand domestic manufacture of the oil. 

Oils were judged on taste, smell, and clarity for many years. (Banoub) The palatability of the medicine directly correlated to these qualities. Perhaps because of the strong, off-putting flavor, some Americans turned to olive oil around 1910 as a potential medicine. (Chee) Later on, the nutritional value of the oil would become the main differentiating factor. 

This sequence of events was only setting the stage for cod liver oils great debut. Finally, in the early 1910s, the science of nutrition was born. In 1913,  McCollum and Davis discovered vitamin A in cod liver oil. In 1922, Mellanby discovered another vitamin in cod liver oil that he called vitamin D. (O’Hagan) Because of the scientific proof that the oil contained important dietary attributes, the liver oil business began to boom.

On both sides of the Atlantic, the 1920s witnessed a massive growth in the cod liver oil industry, flaunted by advertisements with dubious health claims. Where Norwegian grandfathers and curious British doctors had quietly discussed the curative properties of the stinky oil, companies like Scott’s Emulsion began promoting loudly. 

Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua)
Atlantic cod (Gadus morhua). Public Domain

The oil stood at a fairly ambiguous place in the minds of the public. Doctors had been using it to treat tuberculosis for some time, but the claims were extensive. Arthritis, scurvy, rickets, beriberi, malnutrition, and other deficiencies were all on cod liver oil’s list to cure. It was a magical healer, so millions began to drink it despite its notorious flavor. 

A 1938 article captures some of these claims and the skepticism with which they may have been received. “A new use has been found here for cod liver oil–drink it and you can see at night like a cat. At least that is the result of experiments of Dr. Margaret Cammak Smith, nutrition chemist of the University of Arizona, in an attempt to cure night blindness.” (The times-news.15 Dec. 1938.) Vitamin A deficiency can cause night blindness, so the study is well-founded, just not well-received. 

O’Hagan and Eriksson analyze the marketing of cod liver oil in 1920s Sweden and cite a couple instances of exaggeration. One advertisement commands, “Drink Beauty!” (Möllers, SvD, 14 February 1926), while another changes it up, “Drink sun!…Drink it in its most concentrated form: the sea’s vegetable plankton that is processed in the oil extracted from cod’s liver.” Cod liver oil stood in for all that was good in life, and many believed it.

Scott's Emulsion Bottle Advertisement
A 1939 advertisment for Scott's Emulsion. From St. Croix avis. [volume] (Christiansted, St. Croix [V.I.]), 13 Nov. 1939. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress.

For decades after, cod liver oil was a necessary evil at the dinner tables of the Atlantic world. The craze even spread to Asia, but the Pacific cod does not have the same liver as the Atlantic cod. After World War II, the Chinese began to manufacture oil from the livers of sharks. (Chee)

But cod liver oil stuck wherever cod had been fished. An oral history taken in 1978 Kennebunk, Maine describes the local production process that the great grandfathers of the region would have undertaken. A barrel of cod livers would cost the entrepreneurial Mainer 3 or 4 dollars in the early 1900s. They then had to sort the livers, sending the bad ones to tanneries for more harsh application. The interviewee recalls that they could only make the oil if the “wind was south…everybody at the head of the cove got smelled out. [grandfather] used to tell them it was a healthy smell.” A healthy smell, and a rancid flavor. Older generations in New England today can still remember the stench of the daily medicine. 

Many 21st century health nuts still take cod liver oil supplements, but they are able to bypass the sensory dilemma by taking gel capsules. Many folks today still believe in the health qualities of the oil. Yes, there are vitamins in the oil, but the overall health claims are not conclusive. 

Is cod liver oil a drink? Probably not, but the only way it is ingested is by slurping up a small spoonful. The liquid may be stinky, but it is part of our drinking heritage. So much so that it has inspired the artist. The University of Maine Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History gives a folk song local to both Maine and New Foundland that focuses on cod liver oil:

  1. I’m a young married man who is tired of life,Ten years I’ve been wed to a sickly wife; She’ll do nothing all day, only sit down and cry, Wishing to God, oh that she would die. And a friend of my own came to see me one day, He noticed my wife was a-pining away; He afterwards told me that she would get strong, If I get her a bottle of dear Dr. John. 

CHORUS: Oh doctor, oh doctor, oh dear Dr. John, Your cod liver oil is so pure and so strong; I’m afraid of my life, I’ll go down in the soil, If my wife don’t stop drinking that cod liver oil.

  1. Oh, I bought her a bottle, oh, just for to try, The way that she drank it you’d think she was dry; I got her another, it vanished the same, And I thought she had cod liver oil on the brain. She liked it so good now that there was no doubt, I know that my wife she got terrible stout; And as she got stout, of course she got strong, And then I got jealous of Dr. dear John. 

CHORUS 3. My house it resembles a big doctor’s shop, It’s covered with bottles from bottom to top; And then in the morning when the kettle do boil, You would think it was singing of cod liver oil.

cod liver oil

Sources Cited

 

Banoub, Daniel. “Buying vitamins: Newfoundland cod liver oil and the real subsumption of nature, 1919–1939.” Geoforum 92 (2018): 1-8

Chee, Liz P. Y. ““Health Products” at the Boundary Between Food and Pharmaceuticals.” Circulation and Governance of Asian Medicine, 1st ed., Routledge, 2020, pp. 103–17, https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429275418-6.

Chrisman, Sharon, “Cod Liver Oil,” Salt, Volume IV, No 2, August 1978 Kennebunk ME, 41-43.

Grad, Roni. “Cod and the consumptive: a brief history of cod-liver oil in the treatment of pulmonary tuberculosis.” Pharmacy in history 46.3 (2004): 106-120.

McKenna, Omer. 1965. “Cod Liver Oil.” NA65.19, CD95.9. Northeast Archives of Folklore and Oral History, Raymond H. Fogler, Special Collections Department, University of Maine.

“Observations on the Medical Uses of Oleum Jecoris Aselli, or Cod Liver Oil.” Pennsylvania Mercury, and Universal Advertiser, no. 3, 3 Sept. 1784, p. [1]. Readex: Readex AllSearch, infoweb.newsbank.com/apps/readex/doc?p=ARDX&docref=image/v2%3A10CEB9649DDDCC38%40EANX-10E5682F18A18AC0%402372899-10E5682F2B4F6700%400-10E5682FE6387838%40Observations%2Bon%2Bthe%2BMedical%2BUses%2Bof%2BOleum%2BJecoris%2BAselli%252C%2Bor%2BCod%2BLiver%2BOil. Accessed 8 Dec. 2022.

O’Hagan, Lauren Alex, and Göran Eriksson. “Modern science, moral mothers, and mythical nature: a multimodal analysis of cod liver oil marketing in Sweden, 1920–1930.” Food and Foodways 30.4 (2022): 231-260.

The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.), 15 Dec. 1938. Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers. Lib. of Congress. <https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn86063811/1938-12-15/ed-1/seq-2/>

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