History of Auriculotherapy: Additional Information and New Developments

Auriculotherapy, the treatment of patients using ear-point stimulation, is a French technique, deeply rooted in a European medical tradition. Although the French physician, Paul Nogier, MD (1908-1996 ad) invented and promoted auriculotherapy, it is nevertheless worth mentioning, in the course of European history, the occasional use of the ear to relieve head, face, or sciatic nerve pain. It took several centuries to find a physician who attempted to understand why some healers obtained interesting therapeutic results with ear-point stimulation. The exact history of auriculotherapy remained a mystery for a long time. Only recently have researchers begun to understand it better. Many articles, admittedly not based on robust data, wrongly ascribed the discovery of auricular somatotopy to ancient civilizations. It was the recent reading of a book on the treatment of sciatica written in 1869 by Lagrelette that enabled the current author of this article to characterize and confirm the Western roots of auriculotherapy through the history of cauterizations.