STRUCTURE OF NERVE CELL MEMBRANES 161 



part of the surface of the membrane is macromolecular and molecules collide 

 with them much more frequently than they enter the holes. 



I don't know whether that answers the question you made, Dr. Morales, to 

 Dr. Davies or not. But on the question of the critical experiment that will tell 

 you whether a narcotic will affect function by affecting some intercellular en- 

 zymatic mechanism or something of that sort versus its affecting the membrane 

 directly, I wish I could think of something that would be decisive. I don't think 

 that injecting things into the interior is a very good way, because it is extraordi- 

 narily difficult to keep the things in there if they can go into the membrane. 

 Since you want this condition to persist for a little while, it is that sort of story 

 where you inject cyanide into the cells and find that it doesn't have any effect, 

 but when you bathe them in it from the outside they all die. The cells are in 

 water and the cyanide just injected inside comes right out. 



Dr. Morales: May I ask you something about just that? If you inject mole- 

 cules inside cells they would be trapped inside. Now, if they effect, say, mito- 

 chondria or something of this sort, then they ought to have this effect anyway, 

 but if your view is correct, they shouldn't have any effect if you put them inside. 

 This is what I was driving at. Technically it may be nonsense and you might 

 not be able to do this, but I wanted to know if you thought it was, in principle, 

 discriminating. 



Dr. Mullins: I see; I misunderstood the point. I think it is something worth 

 while. I think you would have to agree these agents probably do affect the un- 

 derlying biochemical systems. It is more a question of which they affect first. 

 That was the point I was making. 



Dr. David E. Goldman (Naval Medical Research Institute): I think this 

 question of evaporation is pertinent both to what Dr. Davies has been speaking 

 about and what Dr. Mullins has said. I would like to discuss this question of 

 evaporation in respect to what Dr. Mullins had to say about his model. I am in 

 agreement with Dr. Mullins that this is a reasonable sort of model to make. 

 However, I feel that before one goes about predicting how well any particular 

 molecule will bind to such a model one must consider how much energy it takes 

 to pull an aggregate of such molecules apart. Unless one does this I do not think 

 one can say which will fit better; all one can say is that certain molecules might 

 be expected not to bind because they are too big. If, however, they fit, the ques- 

 tion of how well they fit must always be weighed against the question of how 

 well they fit to themslves, that is, something which makes a good liquid struc- 

 ture will be unlikely to bind simply because it doesn't gain much by binding on 

 to a new type site. 



Dr. Folch-Pi: Ever since the time of Overton and Meyer, people have been 

 talking about oil, and the point is that there is no oil in tissues. There is no phase 

 in tissue except in the adipose tissues where the oil forms a big blob that you 



