332 RALPH S. LILLIE. 



anaesthetics collect in cells in higher concentration than in the 

 medium also favors the partition rather than the adsorption 

 theory of narcosis. Chloroform, ether, and esters undergo con- 

 centration in nervous and other tissues, as Pohl 1 and Hedin 2 

 have shown. Warburg and Wiesel 3 have also found in the case 

 of yeast that the tendency of compounds to concentrate in cells 

 increases with increase in their narcotic power. In solutions 

 that diminished fermentative activity by one half, phenyl 

 urethane was found to be three times and thymol nine times 

 more concentrated in the cells than in the medium. These facts 

 strongly suggest a distribution according to relative solubilities. 

 What Traube especially insists upon is that effects similar to 

 narcosis are shown in cases where lipoid-solubility can play no 

 part. Thus according to Warburg and Wiesel 4 the fermentative 

 and oxidative activities shown by lipoid-free preparations of 

 dried microorganisms are influenced by the lipoid-solvent anaes- 

 thetics in the same manner as in the intact organisms. It is to 

 be noted, however, that the effective concentrations are much 

 higher in the case of such preparations than in that of living cells. 

 Traube cites a large number of observations made with solutions 

 of various surface-active substances, showing that with both 

 animal and plant cells, as well as with enzymes, the degree of 

 narcotic and cytolytic action of inhibition and destruction in 

 the case of enzymes is nearly proportional to the surface- 

 activity of the solution. 5 Solutions of widely different sub- 

 stances, provided they have the same surface-tension ("iso- 

 capillary" solutions), have equal physiological action. In the 

 following table I have collected a number of observations illus- 

 trating the various physiological effects produced by members of 

 the aliphatic alcohol series. In each instance the molecular 

 concentrations required to produce a definite physiological effect 

 are given ; the molecular concentrations which cause equal lower- 

 ing of surface-tension (isocapillary concentrations) are given at 

 the end of the table. 



1 Pohl, Arch. f. exper. Path. u. Pharm., 1891, Vol. 28, p. 239. 

 z Hedin, P finger's Archiv, Vol. 68, p. 229. 



3 Warburg and Wiesel, Pflugers Archiv, 1912, Vol. 144, p. 472. 



4 Loc. cit., p. 471. 



6 Cf. Traube, "Theorie der Narkose," loc. cit. 



