QUESTION ON MEDICINE BOTTLES

[LEANBACON]

Hello all and thanks for offering such an informative website as this one. My question though simple is a puzzle to me. On a recent dive trip to the USA/CANADIAN border i came across several bottles, both older and newer. The two i have a questions about appear to be a medicince bottles. They are corked and contain a yellowish liquid inside.
out of pure curiosity, i smelled the corks, and PPPEEEEWWWWWW[:'(], what an awful smell. they smelled of urine. Was it common to store urine in bottles for any medicinal purposes?or could this be something totally different but being that it was in the water for so many years, it would cause the contents to smell so bad. unfortunately one of the bottles i kept upright and the cork dried, later to fall in to the yellow liquid. i just poured the rancid liquid out and cleaned the bottle with the cork still inside.

 

[woody]

I don't think it was common practice, back then, to hold urine in the bottles for any purpose.
I've smelled some rank smelling bottles over the years, but none had the smell of urine to them.
If the bottle in question doesn't have any embossing on it then it probably doesn't hold much value to a collector.
I try not to keep contents in bottles just for the safety aspect of it.
Better to err on the side of caution, for me.

 

[diggerjeff]

amonia was bottled in glass at that time . it could have absorbed something from the surroundings or some color might have leached from the cork. but than again it could be urine . i see bottles at the inerstate exit near my house that truckers leave because they are in a big hurry and wont take the time to stop at a rest area. you would think on a ship a person would just go off the side of the boat. hard telling!!