Koan Ogata was the founder of Ogata Koan, the origin of the Faculty of Medicine of Osaka University, and was also an excellent doctor.Osaka University holds two medicine boxes that Koan used for the middle and late years.Some of the containers left in the medicine boxes for later use (2 glass bottles and 22 wooden tubular containers with liquid or solid formulations) were already unopenable.Until now, there has been no non-destructive method for analyzing the composition of content drugs in valuable cultural properties.Therefore, the research team focused on the elemental analysis method using the muon beam.

　Muons are elementary particles that have about 200 times the mass of electrons and have the same electric charge as electrons.Due to its high transparency, it is attracting attention as a new method for non-destructive analysis.The research team used KEK's accelerator to create an artificial muon beam, and also used fluorescent X-rays to investigate the drug bottle with the word "sweet" written on the top of the lid and white powder remaining inside.As a result, it was found that the medicine bottle was made of lead-containing glass (lead potash glass) with a thickness of about 3 mm.We also succeeded in observing mercury and chlorine signals from the contents. From the results of the drug history of the word "sweet", it was found to be mercury chloride, which was in agreement with the measurement results.

　This time, we succeeded in the world's first non-destructive analysis of the chemical composition of a drug enclosed in a lead glass container.In the future, it is expected that the progress of non-destructive analysis will lead to the development of appropriate preservation methods and environments for medical cultural properties, and will provide meaningful information to society.

Paper information:[Journal of Natural Medicines] A novel challenge of nondestructive analysis on OGATA Koan's sealed medicine by muonic X-ray analysis