In a group of patients with a motility typical of a superior oblique palsy (a hypertropia increasing in adduction, in down-gaze and on head-tilt, a V-pattern and an excyclotropia), we recorded length-tension diagrams of oblique eye muscles during strabismus surgery. In 14 cases a length-tension recording was made during surgery in general anaesthesia, before and after intravenous administration of succinylcholine, that produces a fierce contraction of eye muscles. Among 14 patients that had eye motilities compatible with a superior oblique muscle palsy, 7 indeed had a non-contracting superior oblique muscle, but others had oblique muscles that contracted vividly. We also made length-tension diagrams of oblique eye muscles during strabismus surgery with local, tetracain eye-drop anaesthesia. Here, the recording was made three times, while the patient looked ahead, into the field of action of the muscle and out of the field of action of the muscle. Some patients indeed had a non-contracting superior oblique muscle and a stiff inferior oblique muscle, but others had superior oblique muscles that contracted vividly, despite an eye motility typical of a superior oblique palsy, with a positive Bielschowsky head-tilt test. This finding confirms the assumption of Kaufmann, Kolling and others that these cases have a non-paretic motility disorder. Viirre et al. found in normal monkeys that disruption of fusion by one week of occlusion of one eye allowed abberrations of conjugate horizontal and vertical eye movement like upshoot-in-adduction to become manifest.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)