Koppanyi's Progress

From the University of Chicago, came tidings of additional experiments in transplantation by Doctor Theodore Koppanyi, already mentioned in these columns for his work on transplanting the eye and the spleen.

Dr. Koppanyi has tunneled a passage in the skull of a fish, and removed one eye with its nerve into this passage, so that the eye, instead of projecting to the side, looks directly upward, the remaining eye being blinded. When the eye is thus transplanted, the fish turns and swims on his side instead of in the usual upright posture. These experiments indicate that the eye has a definite function in maintaining the equilibrium of the body. It has heretofore been generally believed that the function of balance was maintained primarily by the semicircular canals which form a part of the interior mechanism of the ear.

During the War, aviators were tested primarily as to the integrity of these organs and their function. It was learned, however, that when the aviators flew above the clouds and finally came out, they might find themselves flying partially on one side so that they slipped readily into what was known as a "wing slip," and fatal accidents resulted from such causes. In other words, when the aviator was unable to orient himself in relation to the horizon by use of the visual sense, he could not depend for maintaining his balance on the knowledge coming to his brain from the semicircular canals alone.