About forty years ago Weigert1 conducted feeding experiments with inoculated guinea pigs and concluded that the tuberculous process generalized more rapidly in animals fed a strict carbohydrate diet than in control animals receiving an additional liberal amount of milk fat. From this it seemed logical to assume that dietary lipids could produce only beneficial effects in tuberculosis.
Twenty years later this early assumption was challenged by Troteanu,2 who administered cod liver oil directly into the stomach of guinea pigs previously inoculated intraperitoneally with bovine tubercle bacilli. The cod liver oil enhanced the progress of the experimental tuberculosis. This result was confirmed by Negre and his associates,3 who found that the ingestion or subcutaneous injection of cod liver oil or olive oil resulted in an enhancement of experimental tuberculosis in both guinea pigs and rabbits. The opposite results were demonstrated with ethyl esters of palmitic, myristic, lauric, arachidic,