Abstract
With a noctovision, the author observed the reaction of pupils to the stimulation of the autonomic nervous system.
Instruments used were an infra-red lamp, a vidicon camera which had an infra-red vidicon inside, and a continuous recorder (1 film/sec).
As a stimulation, a hand was kept in the cold water (4°C) for one minute (cf. Heines-Brown's cold pressor test).
A group of normal subjects tested proved, most of them, to be in the type of those who dilated their bilateral pupils simultaneously, after the stimulation, which gradually returned to the prior-to-stimulation size.
Most patients, suffering from a unilateral peripheral inner ear lesion, tested in the same way, did not dilate the pupil, on the wrong side after the stimulation.
One patient of Ménière's disease showed continuous dilatation of the pupil, on the wrong side displaying different reactions between the two pupils.
From this fact, it is presumed that the unbalance in the autonomic nervous system of the head and neck has some relationship with and persistence of a disease at the inner ear.
