Abstract

Pain is probably the immediate stimulus for more visits to the Physician's
office than all other complaints combined. Since pain serves as an alert to
injury, it is often the first harbinger of disease. Piperidine has been extensively
utilized for the synthesis of a wide range of therapeutic agents in
general and analgetics in particular for the mitigation of pain. In a similar
attempt, the N-methyl piperidine molecule was derivatized with various
phenacyl halides and the resultant quaternary derivatives were explored extensively
for analgesic activity using the tail flick test. Spectrophotometric
techniques such as UV, IR, Proton NMR and Mass (EI) were also utilized to
confirm the structures of the newly-synthesized compounds. All the compounds
exhibited analgesic activity and particularly 1-[3', 4'-dihydroxyphenacyl)
- N - methylpiperidinium bromide showed approximately one twentieth
the analgesic activity of morphine