No. 035] 



BODILY ROTATION 



525 



these conditions, we are here concerned with one only, 

 i. e., with the effect of regular and continued repetition 

 upon the ocular movements in question. 



It has been commonly observed that long persistence in 

 whirling movements may reduce in intensity the distress- 

 ing symptoms of dizziness. This reduction under repeti- 

 tion has suggested that the accompanying ocular 

 movements may also tend, under persistent practise, to 

 disappear. The testimony of whirling dancers and gym- 

 nasts, who are frequently undisturbed by the swimming 

 and the giddiness, points in this direction, 1 and further 

 evidence, of an experimental sort, 2 has recently been de- 

 rived from subjects who were rotated about three min- 

 utes daily for two or three weeks. At the end of this 

 period the subjects had lost, either wholly or in part, the 

 " after-nystagmus" which usually persists, as we have 

 seen, when the body has come to rest. 



Now these experimental results have been sharply crit- 

 icized by two otologists, Drs. Fisher and Babcock, 3 who 

 are distressed that the stability of such a " reflex reac- 

 tion" as nystagmus should be called in question. "Clin- 

 ical medicine has," as they observe, "for years relied 

 upon the permanency and the constancy of reflex phe- 

 nomena." As for the results just referred to, they set 

 them down as "pathological." Professing to repeat the 

 experiments, but wholly missing the essential point of 

 the method which they criticize, these men have come, not 

 unnaturally, to a conclusion which is not antagonistic to 

 the dogma of the invariable reflex. Despite the miscar- 

 riage of their method, however, they do find a certain 

 amount of reduction in time of nystagmus and this re- 

 duction they propose to explain by the voluntary "gaze- 

 fixing" of "a few subjects." Although the abortive 



1 Parsons, E. P., and Segar, L. H., "A Correlation Study of Bfiriiny 

 Chair Tests and Plying Ability of One Hundred Navy Aviators," J. Amer. 

 Med. Ass., 1918, 70, 1064. 



2 Manual of Medical Besearch Laboratory, Washington, D. C, 1918, 186 ff. 

 s Fisher, L., and Babcock, H. L., "The Eeliability of the Nystagmus 



Test," J. Amer. Med. Ass., 1919, 72, 779 ff. 



