Actually, I have successfully recovered low and/or degraded amounts of morphine
from a glass syringe from the late 1860s-early 1870s.  The problem with old
morphine is that it breaks down.  It took many saturdays in the forensic lab to
design and run the gas chromatograph mass spec test to recover such low amounts
of morphine (produced through adding heat and cold). Forensic labs are not set
up to deal with old samples.

I was hoping to hear more success stories about morphine recovery.  I have been
unable to find any information on how it breaks down outside of the body as
well.

THanks.

Julie



Quoting Dave McMahan <[log in to unmask]>:

> Julie,
>
> While doing survey along remote sections of the abandoned Copper River
> Railroad
> (1908-1938) in 1992 we discovered a corked medicine bottle with white
> powdery
> contents, along with Chinese magazines, in the attic of a section house.
> The
> bottle was tucked inside a baking soda can, along with a sharpened stick,
> and
> secured with a 1920 newspaper.  Sure that the bottle contained narcotics, I
> arranged with contacts at the state crime laboratory to do analysis.  In
> short,
> mass spec. indicated the contents to be strychnine.  My suggestion is that --
> if
> you can arrange for your local crime lab to do analysis, their analytic
> equipment
> is already set up to compare samples with a database of stored profiles for
> narcotics, poisons, etc.
>
> Dave McMahan
>
> Julie Schablitsky wrote:
>
> > Dear Histarchers,
> >
> > Do you have any references or experiences with identifying morphine or
> other
> > opiates from syringes, medicine bottles, or any other artifact?  I am aware
> of
> > Espenshade's work at Camp Baird, South Carolina using the mass spec.  I
> also
> > heard of another unsuccessful attempt to extract morphine from a medicine
> > capsule...reference unknown.  I would greatly appreciate any additional
> > references or experiences on the successful or unsucessful attempts at
> opiate
> > recovery from artifacts.
> >
> > Thank you.
> >
> > Julie Schablitsky
>