“…A wealth ofexperimental data regarding the effects on nerve and muscle membrane of local anaesthetics and related drugs has been interpreted by a mechanism of channel blockade (Adams, 1976;Hille, 1977;Ruff, 1977Ruff, , 1982Ascher, Marty & Neild, 1978;Neher & Steinbach, 1978;Colquhoun & Sheridan, 1981;Farley, Yeh, Watanabe & Narahashi, 1981;Gage & Hamill, 1981). More specifically, a model where ionic channels can be blocked only after they have opened, and where channels can close only after unblocking, has been found satisfactory in many cases.…”