Interesting Little Find

[Plynkes]

Last week at work we were preparing our stall for a show; and I was rummaging through a box full of price labels, prices lists and other boring stuff when at the bottom of the box I discovered this somewhat surprising thing...




A US Army morphine syrette, seemingly of WW2 vintage and unused. How very queer, eh?

I have no idea how it got there. While my line of work is in the Militaria sphere (we sometimes joke that we are in 'the Hitler Business') we make reproduction stuff, we don't actually deal in wartime curios. I can only guess somebody accidentally dropped it in there at a militaria show once upon a time, and it has languished at the bottom of the box ever since.


Thought some of the WW2 crowd might find it interesting. I couldn't help chuckle at the 'Warning: May be habit-forming.'  (No shit, right?) Didn't think they were much bothered about warning labels on everything back then, but I do recall reading somewhere once that those things did contain dangerous amounts of morphine if you were a bit too liberal in their use.

[Gunner Dunbar]

That is a bizarre find, probably rare to I’d imagine.

[dickiegranthum]

“May be habit forming” 

The only time I’ve had morphine, it was like a million butterflies landed on me, and took away all my cares on the planet. I totally never wanted off it.

There used to be full emergency hospitals packed in Canadian rural post office basements (not kidding!). I got to look through one once, and there were CRATES of morphine.

In one of the first aid kits in the same government building I worked in, there was a bandage of Korean War vintage - date stamped!

Cool find though - long expired, as the crates that I mentioned before were regularly replaced with current meds.

[Basementboy]

Very cool find! Any idea what you’ll do with it now?

[carlos marighela]

The good thing is I don't believe morphine has a use by date per se. The bad news is that the street price for a single hit might just get you a takeaway curry.

You should hang on to that and take it to the next Antiques Road Show. We look forward to Fiona Bruce's reaction. 

[dickiegranthum]

The good thing is I don't believe morphine has a use by date per se. The bad news is that the street price for a single hit might just get you a takeaway curry.

You should hang on to that and take it to the next Antiques Road Show. We look forward to Fiona Bruce's reaction. 

Oh it definitely has an expiry date. As I explained in my “mobile nuclear event hospital” post.

I mean, I don’t KNOW if the morphine is still good - only one way to find out, and that’s to GO TRAINSPOTTING!


EDIT: was just watching “Band of Brothers” for the millionth time, and in Episode 6, ‘Bastogne’, Doc the medic holds up that exact morphine syrette. Neat.

[Doug E]

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