The mechanism of anesthetic action on membranes is still an open question, regardless of their extensive use in medical practice. It has been proposed that anesthetics may have the effect of promoting pore formation across membranes or at least switching transmembrane channels. In both cases this may be the result of changes in the interfacial curvature of the membrane due to the presence of anesthetic molecules. Aqueous solutions of surfactants display phases that mimic, in a simplified manner, real biological membranes. Therefore, in this study, two nonionic surfactant systems C16E6/H2O in concentrated solution and C10E3/H2O in dilute solution have been used as model membranes for the investigation of the effects of six common anesthetics (halothane, sodium thiopental, lidocaine base form and hydrochloride, prilocaine hydrochloride, and ketamine hydrochloride). Both binary surfactant-water systems exhibit phase transitions from the lamellar phase, L-alpha, that has zero spontaneous curvature and zero monolayer curvature to phases with more local interfacial curvature. These are the random mesh phase, Mh(1)(0), which consists of lamellae pierced by water-filled pores with local areas of positive interfacial curvature and the sponge phase, L-3, that consists of the lamellar phase with interlamellae attachments, often referred to as a "melted" cubic phase, possessing negative monolayer curvature. Small-angle X-ray scattering and H-2 NMR experiments upon the C16E6/(H2O)-H-2 system and optical observations of the C10E3/H2O system showed that all anesthetics employed in this study cause a shift in the Mh(1)(0) to L-alpha phase transition temperature and in the L-alpha to L-3 transition temperature, respectively. All of the anesthetics studied bind to the interfacial region of the surfactant systems. Two types of behavior were observed on anesthetic addition: type I anesthetics, which decreased interfacial curvature, and type II, which increased it. However, at physiological pH both types of anesthetics decreased interfacial curvature.