After his promotion to Doctor of medicine in Königsberg he worked with Oswald Schmiedeberg, one of the founders of pharmacology as an independent scientific discipline, in Strasbourg.

Between 1884 and 1904 Meyer occupied the Chair of Pharmacology in Marburg where he worked with Emil Adolf von Behring and Otto Loewi, winner of the 1936 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

He supervised the doctoral thesis of Edmond Henri Fischer, who with Edwin Gerhard Krebs won the Nobel prize in physiology and medicine in 1992.

These findings were summarized in three papers in Archiv für experimentelle Pathologie und Pharmakologie by Meyer and his coworker Fritz Baum, published in 1899.

It has been called the most influential correlation in anaesthesia[10] Meyer also discovered that tetanus toxin acts on the central nervous system and is transported there from the periphery via the motor neurons.

[11] Meyer and Rudolf Gottlieb wrote a major German pharmacology textbook that was published in nine editions between 1910 and 1936. he also played an important role in the development and implementation of drug regulation in Austria.

[3] A volume of the Archiv für experimentelle Pathologie und Pharmakologie, edited by Bernhard Naunyn, was also dedicated to Meyer on his 70th birthday.

These items, personal papers, and other memorabilia relating to Meyer's career are in the possession of the Collections at Duke University's Rubenstein Library.