Opium for the Masses

Detection of opium alkaloids in a Cypriot base-ring juglet

“…After heating, morphine and codeine were not detected in any of the samples. This is not surprising, since they have already been shown to degrade under similar conditions to those used here, 8 and they were not detected in the samples which were aged for only 17 days.…”

“…8 They concluded that it would not be surprising if morphine were not to be identified in archaeological samples, since it does not preserve well, and point out that papaverine and thebaine, being more stable, should be the targets of future archaeological analyses. 8 In addition, the pyGC-EI-MS analysis of the juglet contents provided tentative evidence for papaverine.…”

“…It was analysed using thin-layer chromatography (TLC) and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS), 9 and immunoassay methods specific for morphine. 10 The results are inconsistent with the more recent experimental study 8 showing that morphine, codeine and noscapine are relatively unstable and unlikely to survive over long periods. In the 1996 analysis an authentic standard for thebaine was used; the paper reports its detection in a sample of crude opium using both GC-MS and TLC.…”

“…The published work on artificial ageing of opium reveals that papaverine is one of the most stable opium alkaloids, 8 so it was one of the primary analytical targets for this work. There are many publications which describe HPLC-MS analysis of papaverine, 22,[28][29][30] including the use of papaverine as an internal standard.…”

“…Thus, most previous studies have attempted to detect morphine. However, artificial ageing studies of opium have shown that morphine does not survive well, and that papaverine, thebaine and the breakdown products of noscapine (cotarnine (6), hydrocotarnine (7), meconic acid (8) and opianic acid (9)) are the most resistant to degradation, making them much more promising targets for detection of opiates in ancient residues. 8 Numbers in brackets refer to the chemical structures of the alkaloids shown in Fig.…”