Not so long ago, parents used to place a small glass beside their children’s plate. This contained a liquid which tasted as horrible as it smelled. How many generations of children have suffered from this oil extracted from cod’s liver! Even adults considered it particularly loathsome and nauseating. And yet it is one of Nature’s ways of caring for us. Cod-liver oil contains, in large quantities, two vitamins which are essential to life.
Vitamins are substances with very important functions. They help our body to make use of substances which it cannot do without, and which can only be assimilated with their help. They help to transform inert secretion into active secretions. Although they are effective in very low doses, they have to be present regularly in our food, because they ‘are delicate and quickly destroyed.

Cod-liver oil contains vitamins A and D. Vitamin A promotes growth, helps wounds to heal, strengthens our defenses against germs, helps in manufacturing healthy hormones for reproduction and assists in the renewal of the red pigment found in the rods of the retina. (The rods are sensitive to light changes.) Vitamin D helps the body to assimilate the calcium necessary for healthy bones. A lack of vitamin D causes rickets: the skeleton develops badly, the bones are brittle, soft and deformed.
This is what may happen to a person who does not take vitamin A: loss of night vision, lesions of the eyes which can turn into a mass’ of pus, poor growth and all sorts of germs easily caught.... Frightening isn’t it? Now you understand why the ‘cod-liver oil treatment’ has been inflicted on so many children. If you have never taken any, you may become alarmed. Do not worry: vitamin A and D are not found only in cod-liver oil. They are also found “in butter, milk, egg yolk - and in certain pharmaceutical preparations. Besides, now you can take a course of fish oil without being upset by the taste and smell. Nowadays, the fish oil is inclosed in capsules, which do not open up until they reach the intestine.