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The conditioned emotional response (CER) testing procedure was utilized as a drug screening test. Two control compounds, chlorpromazine and reserpine, and one experimental compound 5-(O-methoxyphenoxy-methyl)-2-oxazolidinone, were tested in various doses in the CER program. None of the drugs produced an attenuation of the “anxiety” response in the rat. It would appear that the CER program, as presented in this study, is not suitable as a screening procedure for the evaluation of potential ataractic agents.

Writhing was produced in mice by injecting them intraperitoneally with phenylquinone either 10 or 20 min before the start of scoring. The activity of two antiwrithing agents was compared: morphine and nalorphine at doses of 0.5 and 2.0 mg/kg injected subcutaneously 10, 20, or 40 min before scoring. Analyses of both quantal and graded data indicated that the antiwrithing activity of nalorphine decreased faster than that of morphine over time and that the slopes of the dose-response lines for nalorphine were flatter than those for morphine.

Male Wistar rats were subjected to a variable stress program 6 days per week, 4 hours per day. The blood pressure of all animals markedly increased with the peak pressor response occurring during the 11th week. There was no significant difference between the blood pressures of rats receiving saline, 1.0 ml/kg, i.p.; reserpine phosphate, 0.1 mg/kg, i.p.; and chlorpromazine hydrochloride, 4 mg/kg, i.p. Both compounds not only failed to decrease the pressor effects induced by the stressors but also appeared to potentiate the lethal effects of the Stressors. Reserpine increased mortality to stress by over 200% and chlorpromazine increased the mortality rate by approximately 100%. All stressed animals dying during the experiment demonstrated marked vacuolization of the three layers of the adrenal cortex with severe congestion of the sinusoids of the zona reticularis. The reserpine treated animals also demonstrated possible necroses of the outer layers of the zona fasciculata.