A sympatholytic (adrenergic blocking) substance (dibenzyl-beta-chloroethyl ethyl ammonium bromide) with rapid action and high activity in animal experiments

THE substance N,N-dibenzyl-β-chloroethylamine was synthetized by Eisleb in 1930 1. However, its very interesting biological properties were not discovered until 1945 by Nickerson and Goodman2. Since then, Nickerson and his associates have published a series of papers on this substance, which has been given the trade mark ‘Dibenamine'. The action of ‘Dibenamine’ mainly consists of an adrenergic block of higher degree and duration than that of any older drug of this type. It has already been widely used in physiological studies concerning the sympathetic nervous system. Nickerson and Goodman3 consider that ‘Dibenamine’ exerts its systemic effect after an intramolecular re-arrangement, forming a highly reactive, cyclic ethylenimonium cation. This procedure, however, takes some time, and thus explains why the substance in vivo does not develop its full effect until about thirty minutes after an intravenous injection.