Modifications to Stas’s Method, Proposed by Uslar and Erdman
1st. The materials to be examined are brought to the consistence of a thin paste, and digested for about two hours with water, to which some hydrochloric acid has been added, at a temperature of 60° to 80°. The mixture is then filtered through a moistened linen cloth, and the residue washed with warm acidulated water; the washings being added to the solution.
2nd. Some pure quartz sand—or, preferably, silica prepared by the decomposition of fluoride of silicium—is added to the filtrate, the fluid supersaturated with ammonia, and evaporated to dryness over a water-bath: the addition of silica renders the residue friable.
3rd. The residue is boiled repeatedly with amylic alcohol, which extracts all the alkaloid present as well as the fatty and coloring matters, and the extracts filtered through filter paper that has been moistened with amylic alcohol.
4th. The filtered fluid is thoroughly agitated with ten or twelve times its volume of almost boiling water acidulated with hydrochloric acid: the hydrochlorate of the alkaloid present goes into the aqueous solution, the fatty and coloring substances remaining dissolved in the oily supernatant layer. The latter is separated by means of a pipette, and the acid aqueous solution shaken with fresh quantities of amylic alcohol until completely decolorized.
5th. The aqueous solution is then concentrated, ammonia added, and the mixture well shaken with warm amylic alcohol, in which the alkaloid dissolves. As soon as the solution forms a supernatant layer upon the surface of the fluid, it is drawn off with a pipette and evaporated on a water-bath. In this manner, the alkaloid is usually obtained in a sufficient state of purity to admit of its immediate identification; if, however, a small portion turns brown when treated with concentrated sulphuric acid, the process of purification must be repeated. Under these circumstances it is re-dissolved in dilute hydrochloric acid, the solution repeatedly shaken with amylic alcohol, in order to extract the impurities present, and the alkaloid then extracted with ammonia and amylic alcohol, as previously directed.
The method of von Uslar and Erdman differs from that of Stas merely in the substitution of amylic alcohol for ether, and of hydrochloric acid for oxalic or tartaric acid. It offers no advantages over Stas’s method if the alkaloids present are soluble in ether but is even less advantageous in this case, inasmuch as its execution requires a longer time. In cases where the detection of morphine, or an unknown alkaloid, is desired, the use of amylic alcohol instead of ether is, it is true, preferable; still, with the exercise of care, ether can also be employed, and, as this process greatly facilitates examinations when no clew to the poison present exists and all alkaloids may possibly be absent, we prefer it to the one just described.