GALVANIC FALLING IN CLINICAL USE

Abstract

Galvanic falling, reported over a hundred years ago,¹has not been utilized as a clinical procedure for testing labyrinthine functions, as have the caloric and rotation tests, because of inconsistent results. Disturbance of the normal posture of a person or of an experimental animal by stimulation of the region of the ear with the galvanic current has been reported by many investigators (Ritter, cited by Stern²), Purkinje, Remak, Brenner, Hitzig,¹James,³Pollak⁴and Babinski.⁵Hitzig in 1871, sixty-eight years after the early report of Augustine and almost fifty years after Purkinje's work on the galvanic falling reaction (cited by Hitzig¹), noted that the direction of the falling obtained on closure of the galvanic circuit was uniformly toward the anodal electrode. Early investigators considered the reactions to be due to central stimulation, principally of the cerebellum. Breuer⁶localized the reactions obtained by galvanic