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Prior to 1900, oil of cade, a drug which is fairly well known and widely used in numerous dermatologic conditions, was of different composition from that now obtainable. It was a French product, produced by the destructive distillation of juniper. The oil was thick, black and syrupy, with a distinct odor of pine. In the late nineties, for some reason, oil of cade suddenly changed its composition, being more or less what is now obtainable, a less thick but still black oil with a definite, somewhat disagreeable, tarry odor.

My father, Dr. J. Williams Lord, who at the time prescribed oil of cade frequently, found the new preparation to be much more irritating and less curative than the original product. He communicated with several of the leading manufacturing chemists and drug jobbers throughout the country, submitting to them samples of the oil of cade which he had in stock, and