A historical vignette. Turbulence around the otoliths. Sappey's hostility and Breschet's defence.

Nowadays, the animosity between medical scholars is seldom apparent. However, during the XIXth century it was not necessarily so. We find an example of this in Sappey's hostility against his colleague anatomist Gilbert Breschet. It concerned the discovery of the otoliths of the inner ear that Breschet attributed to himself. We present here Breschet's defence.