AmjJuTy,''il>96arm-}      Morphine  in  To xico logical  Cases.  377 
The  next  step  was  to  mix  0  050  gramme  morphine  with  a  suita- 
ble portion  of  refuse  from  a  restaurant — meat,  fat  and  some  bulk  of 
vegetable  matter.  Ten  mixtures  of  this  kind  were  left  to  putrefy  in 
my  laboratory  for  fifty  days,  in  a  warm  room,  covered  with  a  glass 
jar.  Three  mixtures  of  the  same  quantity  of  morphine  with  hu- 
man flesh,  furnished  by  the  medical  school,  were  also  left  to  putrefy. 
Morphine  was  used,  and  not  the  sulphate  or  the  hydrochlorate,  be- 
cause there  was  plenty  of  the  alkaloid  on  hand  in  the  laboratory 
from  previous  opium  assays,  and  it  answered  just  as  well.  To  one 
portion  of  human  flesh  (lungs,  heart,  stomach,  liver)  I  added  three 
grains  of  morphine  sulphate  from  a  drug  store. 
It  was  desirable,  Prof.  Charles  A.  Doremus  states,  in  his  "Chemical  History 
of  a  Case  of  Combined  Antimonial  and  Arsenical  Poisoning"  {Journal  of  the 
American  Chemical  Society,  September,  1895,  pages  672,  673),  to  ascertain 
if  the  ptomaines  present  might  either  give  or  mask  the  morphine  reactions. 
Morphine  had  been  prescribed.  The  morphine  reactions  were  not  obtain- 
able; some  of  the  ptomaine  reactions  were  pronounced.  Minute  quantities  of 
morphine  solutions  added  to  portions  of  the  residues  could  be  detected 
by  appropriate  tests. 
VI.  At  the  end  of  the  fifty  days'  exposure  morphine  was  searched 
for  in  all  the  mixtures  by  my  scholars  and  myself  by  the  methods  of 
Dragendorff,  of  Stas-Otto  and  of  Graham  (the  dialysation  process), 
due  precautions  being  taken  against  confusion  in  the  chemical  reac- 
tions. Ptomaines  (or  .  ptomatines,  as  it  is  proposed  we  should  write 
more  grammatically)  being  removed  by  washing  the  aqueous  acid 
and  the  aqueous  alkaline  fluid  respectively  with  ethyl  ether,  at 
summer  room  temperature,  and  with  a  mixture  of  4  volumes  of  ethyl 
ether  and  1  volume  of  chloroform, 
as  long  as  those  solvents  removed  substances,  giving  alkaloidal  reactions, 
precipitates,  with  a  solution  of  iodine  in  potassium  iodide  and  with  mer- 
curio-potassium  iodide  solution, 
the  latter  solution  always  added  to  an  acidulated  aqueous  portion. 
Isobutylic  alcohol  is  substituted  for  amylic  alcohol  in  the  differ- 
ent processes,  only  to  avoid  the  bad  effect  of  the  latter  on  the  opera- 
tor (headache) ;  otherwise  it  has  no  advantage. 
VII.  One  case  is  conducted  according  to  Kippenberger's  method. 
To  one-third  part  of  the  human  flesh,  to  which  3  grains  of 
morphine  sulphate,  obtained  in  a  drug  store,  was  added,  and  which 
was  kept  in  a  dark  closet,  covered  with  a  glass  jar,  and  this 
again  covered  with  earth,  to  putrefy — q.  s.  glycerin  of  1-25  sp. 
