Found pharmacy bottle with contents

[dmayermpls]

Recently I dug an old pharmacy bottle with cork & contents. What is in this bottle? How do I find out what contents are? If it is full of narcotics what do I do with it? Or should I just leave it a mystery? I'm sure this bottle with its contents is most likely illegal to possess.....Bottle is a square druggist bottle measuring 3.5"Hx1"Dx1"W embossed with John Harvey Detroit pharmacist in a ribbon logo guessing @1885-ish. Has white crystal-like contents over half full with original cork. I'm NOT opening this bottle ever by myself!! Help me figure this out please

 

[UnderMiner]

I wonder what it is... most likely nothing too harmful.

 

[CanadianBottles]

Only way to know for sure would be to send it to a lab for chemical analysis. I don't see any point in doing that though. Druggist bottles like that would have been more likely to contain practical household chemicals compared to patent meds which would often have opiates and other now-illegal substances in them. A lot (most?) of these druggist bottles contained things that you wouldn't even need a prescription for today, and might not even buy in a pharmacy at all. I think it's most likely that yours contains something boring, like Epsom salt, borax, or baking soda. I would be VERY surprised if it turns out to contain something like cocaine.