Robert Barany and the controversy surrounding his discovery of the caloric reaction

It was not until the latter half of the 19th century that the vestibular part of the inner ear was recognized to have a function separate from hearing. Robert Barany was one of the first clinicians to assess vestibular function systematically in patients. He developed standard caloric, rotational, and pointing tests and was the first to describe benign paroxysmal positional nystagmus. Barany began his career working in the otology clinic of Adam Politzer at the University of Vienna. He received the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1916 for his work on the mechanism of the caloric reaction. However, in the aftermath of the First World War and the controversy surrounding his selection for the Nobel Prize, Barany left Vienna for Uppsala, Sweden, where he spent the last 20 years of his life in relative isolation.