Io6 ACTIONS OF NARCOTICS 



CHCls ^_ /NH-COv /Et 



CO 



NO. A^'^'^^Y 



CH3.CH2OH V_yNH2 \NH-CoAEt 



First inspection of these formulae suggests that it would 

 be impossible for these substances to act through the 

 same chemical mechanism, but if we make the hypoth- 

 esis that these substances act after dissolving in a lipoid 

 phase, then the first thing we must do is calculate what 

 are the relative concentrations of these substances in the 

 lipoid for solutions having the same narcotic activity. It 

 is surprising to find that although the structures of these 

 substances are quite different, and although their equi- 

 narcotic concentrations in water are quite different, the 

 concentration of these substances in lipoid is often prac- 

 tically the same. 



Tables xix and xx show two examples of calculations 

 made by K.H.Meyer (1937), in which he develops 

 the Overton-Meyer hypothesis in a fairly precise 

 manner. One column in these tables shows concentration 

 of material which produces a given degree of narcosis. 

 The other column shows the concentrations of the diffe- 

 rent substances in an oily phase which would be in equi- 

 librium with the narcotic concentration in air or water, 

 as the case may be in the two tables. For the results shown 

 in Table xix where the narcotic is present in air, the con- 

 centrations of different narcotics producing a standard 

 effect sho w a variation of 740 fold, whereas the corre- 

 sponding equilibrium concentrations in oil show a vari- 



