Labyrinthine Tests and their Aid to Diagnosis

Royal Society of Medicine—Section of Otology

“…Labyrinthitis is such a sign, and it requires careful investigation and prompt action as soon as it becomes apparent." Tweedie (1934), who knew as much as anyone of his generation about the physiology of the labyrinth, supports the above view. In a paper published in 1934 he stated that in inflammatory lesions of the labyrinth-as in inflammation of any other organ-the normal responses to stimuli were upset, and all sorts of contradictory results obtained.…”

Societies' Proceedings

“…In submitting any of my own views on the subject, I have little further to offer since the last occasion on which I placed them before the Section. 5 I then suggested amongst other things that in vestibular nystagmus we are dealing with very simple physiological phenomena, similar to the tickling reflex, and I have since been gratified to find that no less an observer than Lorente de No had just committed himself to much the same statement in a paper which I had not then seen. 6 I also said, " We know more of the physiological results of artificial stimuli than of the effects of pathological lesions " -a statement which I find is also confirmed by Lorente de No in a letter received from him this February, in which he writes : " The individual variations are so enormous that it is very difficult to state when a response begins to be pathological "-but I am glad that he was able to qualify this remark by a further statement that he was beginning " to find constancy in the results " of his tests ; and, that in a still later letter he could write yet more hopefully as to the result of his employment of the caloric test, based on the use of varying temperatures of water applied for various lengths of time, which latter factor, he says, is all-important and assessed by counting the number of nystagmic movements thus obtained.…”