Introduction
Auriculotherapy -also known as auricular therapy (ear acupuncture) - is a form of alternative medicine based on the idea that the ear is a microsystem, meaning that the entire body is represented on the auricle (or auricula, or pinna - the outer portion of the ear) in a similar fashion to reflexology (zone therapy) and iridology (iridodiagnosis), and that the entire body can be treated by stimulation of the surface of the ear exclusively.


History
In the 1950s, Dr. Paul Nogier noticed that a local lay practitioner (mme Barrin)in Lyon, France was treating sciatica by cauterizing an area of the ear, which prompted him to investigate the relationship between locations on the ear and human anatomy. Nogier's first great discovery was the somatotopic presentation of the inverted fetus in the ear, the anatomic regions of the fetus corresponding to specific zones of the ear. Nogier discovered that pain in any part of the body could be relieved by either needling, cauterising, massaging or electrically stimulating the region of the ear that corresponded with the anatomical area of the pain. These discoveries were quickly adopted by the Chinese and included in their Traditional Chinese Medicine practices. Nogier called this process auriculotherapy. It has become widely known as a treatment for pain and other related medical disorders and has been used in combined therapies to treat substance abuse (NADA protocol) .


Vascular Autonomic Sign
"Dr Nogier noticed that there was a distinct change in the amplitude and dimension of the pulse when certain points on the auricle were stimulated. This occurs consistently and is both repeatable and measurable by modern equipment. Dr Nogier called it the Vascular Autonomic Sign (VAS). Being able to detect the VAS on the radial pulse of (generally) the patients‘ left hand enables the practitioner to precisely determine the location of a point, whether there is a pathology in the region of the body that relates to specific points, and whether certain substances (foods, medicines, herbs, etc.) are indicated. Accurate employment of the VAS in diagnosis and treatment is essential to Auriculotherapy and Auriculomedicine."


Maps
Many widely differing auriculotherapy maps exist (examples: [6] [7]). Nogier first proposed a "somatotopic" map with the body appearing on the ear as an inverted fetus, with the head towards the lower lobule, the feet at the uppermost portion of the auricle, and the body in between; he subsequently produced three further "phase" diagrams providing additional and alternative sets of stimulation locations, in which the part or parts of the ear considered to represent a specific organ varies significantly depending on the "phase" of the ailment [8]. Some French system practitioners now use a more distorted representation of the body in the ear, more similar to the somatotopic representation on the cerebal cortex [1]. Chinese system diagrams place more emphasis on metaphorical names rather than anatomical locations.