Paper Chromatographic Examination of the Alkaloid Extract in Toxicology

Abstract

RECENT advances in chemotherapy present the police toxicologist with the problem of extracting and identifying from viscera an increasing number of basic organic compounds. In the past, methods of identifying less than milligram quantities of basic poisons extracted from the body have depended on colour reactions and micro-crystallography. Little is known of the fate of these new drugs in the body, and their reactions with the alkaloidal reagents are often unpublished. Paper chromatography is obviously the method of choice for the preliminary sorting on a microgram scale of these poisons from one another and from their metabolites.