Electrodermal Screening (EDS)

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Electrodermal screening dated back to the early 1900’s and was known initially in health care as Galvanic Skin Testing. At first, Galvanic Skin Testing measured the electrical resistance of the skin. The Galvanic Skin Tests would detect sweat on the skin which produced better electrical conduction.

The reason they test for sweat is that the nervous system controls perspiration. Some of the original Galvanic Skin test response technology is still used today in current lie detector tests. Lie detector tests also test pulse, breathing and blood pressure changes.

In 1849 Dubois-Reymond, a physician from Germany, first discovered that a person’s skin was electrically charged and he found that this electric current flowed between the limbs and muscles. It wasn’t until 30 years later that two Swiss physicians, Hermann and Luchsinger, discovered the connection between this electric current and a person’s eccrine sweat glands.

Actual usage of these discoveries wouldn’t be used until the turn of the century around 1906. One of the first documented uses of EDS was by C.G. Jung, and he wrote about it in his book “Studies in Word Association.”

In the 1950’s another German named Reinhold Voll started combining the use of Electrodermal screening and acupuncture. Voll, who was both a physician and acupuncturist, developed the first system. His EDS system was called the Dermatron and is the first generation of what would become the EAV or Electroacupuncture of Voll.

Though some of Voll’s methods and theories would be criticized he would dedicate the rest of his life to his assumptions about the correlations between diseases and the electrical resistance changes along the acupuncture points in the meridians.

He thought that if he could identify electrical changes in specific acupuncture points associated with particular diseases, then he might be able to identify those wellness issues easier and earlier.

Credit: www.ihtbio.com