ABSTRACT
This chapter provides some data on the relative contribution of weight, on the one hand, and the nervous type, on the other, to individual variation in the tolerance of amylobarbitone sodium as assessed by a sedation threshold technique. The notion of nervous typology arose and continues in Russian physiology and psychology, but has been adopted by a number of psychologists in the West who have demonstrated relationships between personality and measures of central nervous arousal. Compared with measures of nervous type, the somatic characteristic of weight bore little relationship to barbiturate tolerance and, even though yielding a small but significant correlation with it, provides a poor guide as to the dosage of drug required to sedate the individual. Studies using these different methods of determining the sedation threshold have consistently shown differences between personality types and correlations with other measures of nervous typology.
