According to the result from experiments on sperm whale oil, the esters of fatty acids with oleyl-, and cetyl alcohol, conducted by Somekawa(2), sperm whale oil and oleyl oleate had seborrhea producing activity upon the rats, but cetyl oleate, oleyl palminate, and hydrogenated sperm whale oil (iodine value 1.22) had no property producing seborrhea.
However, we assumed that higher alcohols which had ester formed with fatty acids, would always become seborrhea-effective on the rats. With this view in mind, we prepared some higher alcohols and their esters with fatty acids in order to reexamine the seborrhea-forming property of these matters to the rats.
The results obtained were as follows:
(1) As it had been already shown by Somekawa, synthetic oleyl oleate showed the seborrhea forming activity to the rats (Table 3).
(2) Moreover, just as we had expected, oleyl stearate, cetyl oleate, octadecyl oleate, and partially reduced products of oleyl oleate, indicated the seborrhea forming activity upon the rats.
(3) After the feeding experiments with oleyl oleate, and oleic acid's ester of partially reduced products of oleyl alcohol (the mixture of oleyl-, and octadecyl alcohol), the rats were put to death to analysis the properties of their body fats.
It can be seen in Table 5 that viscera and meat oil of the administered rats were lower in the saponification value than those of normal rats and contained large amounts of unsaponifiable matter.
