the early history of electrodermal research

PSYCHOPHYSIOLOGY y^^j g j ^ ^ ^

Copyright © 1970 by The Society for Psychophysiological Research Printed in U.S A

THE EARLY HISTORY OF ELECTRODERMALRESEARCH

EVA NEUMANN

Gwynedd-Mercy College, Gwynedd Valley, Pennsylvania

AND RICHARD BLANTON

Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee

ABSTRACT

The historical origins and early development of electrodermal research arereviewed in the light of a substantial number of previously unexamined sources.Relevant literature in electrophysiology, neurology, electrodiagnosis, and elec-trotherapy is examined with regard to the technology and the context of ideas inscience and medicine. The first reports of basal skin resistance (BSR) and stimu-lated skin resistance (GSR) change by Vigouroux and Fere, respectively, are re-lated to their other research and that of other workers. Hermann's early work onthe sudomotor system is seen as much more advanced than has been realized,providing a sound basis for theory which the French apparently never noticed.Several additional sources suggest that TarchanofE's work was performed withawareness of Fere's and was probably not an independent discovery.

The growth of the field following "rediscovery" of the GSR by Mueller andVeraguth is seen as a product of interest in indexing "mental events." The earlierwork is seen as conceptually closer to current interest in the phenomena as aspectsof the arousal system.

DESCRIPTORS: Electrodermal research, History of electrodermal research.Skin resistance, GSR, PGR, Electrophysiology, Electrotherapy, Magnetotherapy,Metallotherapy, Detection of emotions. (R. Blanton)

The first observations of psychological factors in relation to electrodermalphenomena are generally attributed to Romain Vigouroux (1879). Yet intensiveresearch in the area was not begun until twenty-five years later, when Veraguthand Jung performed the first experiments with word association. During thatI)eriod, four other workers made reports, and two of these, Fere and Tarchanoff,did work of fundamental significance. The field has been extensively reviewed(Prideaux, 1920; Landis ct DeWick, 1929; Landis, 1932; McCleary, 1950), butas has been customary, these reviews were directed toward current questions oftheory and method rather than the historical development of the ideas which

This paper was supported in part by Grant i^RD-2552-S from the Rehabilitafion ServicesAdministration.

Address requests for reprints to: Ilichard Blanton, Department of Psychology, Vander-bilt University, Nashville, Tennessee 37203.

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454 NEUMANN AND BLANTON Vol. 6, No. 4

define the field. We have been unable to locate any sources which relate the earlystudies to the scientific and professional context from which they arose. Thepresent paper is an attempt to do that.

To understand the development of science, we should examine the ways inwhich the life of ideas was interwoven with the lives of the men who did thework. The logical implications of this approach are eloquently presented byToulmin (1967a, 1967b). In his view, science may be said to be evolutionary inthe sense that a development or discovery which does not find a niche in theconceptual ecology becomes a victim of natural selection, and does not generatescientific offspring. From this standpoint, Mendel's work, for example, can beseen as ideologically maladapted. But since modern recording methods oftenpreserve these genetic anomalies, the creature survived to become recognizedas the progenitor of a new family of scientific ideas. It simply lay dormant untilits time had come.

Is the GSR such a case? While it cannot be compared with the laws of geneticsin significance or in the effect of the hiatus on the history of the field, there are,nevertheless, some reasons for a positive judgment. E. K. Mueller, the engineerwho demonstrated the phenomenon to Veraguth in 1904, claimed to have dis-covered it independently; but such discoveries may usually be discounted whenthe basic technology is well developed and a number of relevant reports are inprint. Our examination of the research done prior to 1900 in the context of theintellectual atmosphere of the time has yielded an answer to the question ofpremature discovery by Vigouroux which is rather more complex. The historycontains instances of serendipity, egocentric cupidity and jealousy, of the impactof international politics and above all, of the dominance of major scientific figureswhose conceptions of the nature of the scientific enterprise left no place for ex-planations of phenomena which might be called vitalistic. The most importantof these was J. M. Charcot, but in Germany the infiuence of DuBois-Reymond,while indirect, was no less powerful.

^Moreover, the questions motivating the research of Vigouroux and of Ferewhich followed were based on theoretical notions which are a full century apartin the history of scientific ideas. Vigouroux' study was stimulated by a theory ofCharcot which had roots in the animal magnetism notions of the 18th century,while Fere was conceptually ahead of his time.

There are, in addition, several aspects to the development of the technologywhich are of some interest and with which modern workers are largely unfamiliar.We will attempt, in the present paper, to examine this background and will tryto offer some critical comments for those readers interested in the scientificenterprise in its broader aspects.

ELECTRO-DIAGNOSIS AND THERAPY

Galvani's discovery of the electrical factors in nerve and muscle action openeda great vista for science, the view of vital processes as electrical. This was anopening for charlatans as well as scientists, and stimulated increased interest inmesmerism, which had been under attack since the condemnation of Mesmer by

January, 1970 EARLY ELECTRODERMAL RESEARCH 455

the French academy of sciences in 1784. Active work on medical applications ofelectricity began immediately, and it was generally accepted by 1840 that thebody's electrical characteristics provided not only a basis for a theory of disease,but for diagnosis and therapy. Nineteenth century materialists were stronglyattracted to such a physical theory.

It was assumed that diseases of the nervous system, especially, could bediagnosed by measurement of changes in the distribution of electrical currentin the body and sensitivity of body parts to stimulation by appropriate current,and could be treated by means of the administration of electricity. This wascommonly held for sensory and muscular disorders, and there were even those(Remak, 1858) who believed it possible to stimulate the autonomic nervoussystem by administering faradic current to an area of the neck near the cervicalganglion.

The economic incentive provided by practical applications was an importantstimulus to research in electricity and related phenomena. By 1870, considerablesophistication in equipment and procedures had been attained for galvanic,faradic, and static current generation and measurement. It was customary forfaradic stimulation, the most widely used method, to use a battery of four tofourteen dry cells, and inductorium of the type designed by DuBois-Reymond(1848-49), consisting of two coils which could be exactly varied in their fieldoverlap, and a capacitor of foil and paper. An interrupter of the solenoid typewith an adjustable hammer was used to provide an appropriate pulse frequencyoutput. Plxed resistances could be intercalated in the circuit to compensate forvariations in skin resistance over the body. A great deal of work had been doneonthetechniquesof electrode construction, materials, and placement. (See Fig. 1.)

The basic research in electrophysiology had been performed b.y DuBois-Rey-mond in Germany, whose first two volumes on animal electricity were publishedin 1848-49. The work of Waller (1850) on nerve degeneration had provided abreakthrough for neuroanatomy and pathology. Claude Bernard's work (1852,1855-56), with a major landmark in the discovery of the mechanism of vasculartoiius in 1851, was the impetus for rapid progress in the study of autonomicfunctions.

The measurement of skin resistance, by the time of Vigouroux' experiment.

FIG. 1. A DuBois-Reymond Coil with adjustable hammer


was fairly understood. Tschiriew and DeWatteville (1880), for example, provideddata on variations of skin resistance (hereafter designated SR) over the body asa factor in the measurement of cutaneous sensitivity, and proposed, as a solutionto the problem of error due to such variations, the use of a very high resistance(about 3 megohms) added to the input impedance of the body to the current.Apparently, techniques for the study of electrodermal phenomena lacked onlythe benefit of modern amplification and recording methods to be comparablewith present day methods.

Vigouroux was an electrotherapist and electrodiagnostician, a pupil of Duch-enne de Boulogne, who operated the fully equipped laboratory and clinical ser-vice at the Salpetriere. He provided the annotations on this subject for Charcot'spublished lectures (Charcot, 1877-89). Charcot himself, of course, was the great-est clinical neurologist of the age, and has been said to have founded, between1862 and 1870, the science of neurology (Guillain, 1959). He wished, also, toestablish a science of physiological psychology, and convened the first Inter-national Congress of Psychology in Paris in 1886. While some aspects of thisinterest are well known (cf. Jones, 1956), other factors are less frequently de-scribed. Since these have a bearing on our problem, we must allude to them.

When the buildings at the Salpetriere were repaired in the 1860s, patients hadto be shifted about, and were then segregated by degree of severity of illness.This brought the hysterical and epileptic patients together in the same wards,and the resulting changes in the symptoms of the former, especially their "simu-lation" of the seizures of epileptics housed with them, proved too fascinating toCharcot to be ignored. The great man turned his attention to these patients,performing a number of experiments in order to distinguish ''genuine" from"simulated" symptoms (Charcot, 1877-89, vol. 3, esp. 14 ff.), for which he em-ployed kymograph recording of movement and respiration. Stimulated by oneof his students. Richer, he took up the study of hypnosis, had Braid's worktranslated into French in 1883 (Braid, 1843), and undertook studies of theduplication of hysterical and epileptic symptoms under hypnosis. These experi-ments led to considerable controversy, in large measure because Charcot couldnot abide dualistic explanations involving "mentalistic" concepts, and, in hissearch for an ideologically acceptable explanatory mechanism, he turned to theold notion of animal magnetism which had, at least, the virtue of being physical-istic.

For some years the treatment of hysterics by means of the application ofappropriate metals or magnets had been widespread medical practice. Charcot'sacceptance of these techniques was based on the books and papers of Burq (1853,et seq.), reporting many years of clinical practice and experimentation. Burqhad the theory that the metallic or magnetic bodies altered, focussed, or redi-rected the distribution of electrical forces in the body. Vigouroux presented atheoretical rationale for the effect (Vigouroux, 1877, 1878b), arguing that thesuccesses of metallotherapy were due, as were those of electrotherapy, to a change

1 Charcot was a genius at inferring neuropathology from behavioral cues and believedthat a system of psychology could be developed by the study of clinical cases which wouldprovide the "natural experiments."


in the electrical tension of a part of the body, in part due to changed blood flow,but possibly due also to changes in nerve conduction.

Charcot undertook a series of studies under the guidance of a committee ofdistinguished colleagues, including Claude Bernard.^ He reported the clinicalwork, with details of remarkable cures, in three issues of Lancet (1878) opposingan electrical theory to the theory of "expectant attention," which Braid hadproposed, and which had been elaborated by Carpenter (1876), and Tuke (1879).In the Lancet reports, Charcot described a phenomenon which he had labelled"transfert," a movement of the hysterical symptom to the other side of the bodyas the magnet restored normal function to the previously affected side. An edi-torial reply (p. 393), which was probably written by Carpenter, is remarkablefor combining expressed admiration for Charcot as a neurologist with hostilitytoward his ideas: "The question appears to us to be beset with pitfalls of fallaciousinfluence far more grave and numerous than Professor Charcot is disposed toadmit; and we think that the profession will do well to suspend its judgementuntil more independent evidence is forthcoming than that furnished by the well-trained patients of the Salpetriere or even the private practice of its distinguishedphysician."

DeWatteville, in a subsequent issue of Brain (1878-79), staunchly defendedCharcot. Offering a version of the electrical theory, he asked for suspension ofjudgment until all the data were in. But the medical and scientific fraternitywas, in general, strongly negative in its opinion (Bennett, 1878-79).

VIGOUROUX AND BASAL SKIN RESISTANCE

111 1878, Moritz Benedikt, of Vienna, a neurologist and electrotherapist ofdistinction, visited Paris and added his support to Charcot's view. Benedikt hadworked with hypnosis and metallotherapy and observed the work of severalother physicians, but the techniques, in general, had been met with hostihty bythe Viennese medical fraternity. In a paper appealing for tolerance and respectfor advancing science (Benedikt, 1880), he reports that in 1878 he had proposedto Charcot an experiment on the "transfert" phenomenon, which would involvethe study of electrophysiological change in a patient as the symptom was shiftedfrom one side of the body to the other by means of the magnet. According toBenedikt, Charcot had then begun to study this problem with Vigouroux and itis apparently this experiment which produced the first observations of skinresistance change.

The Salpetriere had apparatus for the use of static electricity in electrotherapyculled the "static electrical bath." The patient sat on an insulated stool in con-tact w ith an electrode, and a static charge generator was used to build up a staticcharge which, when discharged, would cause considerable piloerection and crepi-

^ Bernard, upon observing the remarkable effects of the magnets on one patient mur-mured, "Malo cum Platone errare," a fragment, apparently, of a passage in Cicero'sTusculan Disputations: "Errare me hercule malo cum Platone—quam cum istis veraseiitire," or "I would rather be wrong with Plato than right with such as these (Pytha-goreans)." He apparently contributed little to the committee's work, and died later in thesame year.


FIG. 2. The static electrical "bath." In this version an electrode over the head directsthe discharge, producing a static "wind."

From: Liebig, G. A., & Roh6, G. H. Practical electricity in medicine and surgery. Philadelphia: F.A. Davis, 1890.

tation. (See Fig. 2.) Vigouroux was devoted to this method for the treatnient ofanesthesias, and had observed the transfert phenomenon with it in one case, withspontaneous alternations in the symptom after current generation was ceased(Vigouroux, 1878a). For the new experiment, he made measures of skin re-sistance under magneto-therapy, and one wonders whether he may have usedthe same patient.

For previous workers, SR was a disturbing factor to be eliminated or equalizedin applying current to a person for diagnostic or therapeutic purposes. In theexperiment, however, Vigouroux made SR per se (now called basal skin resist-ance, BSR) the experimental variable, measuring the BSR in the case of hys-terical anesthesia on areas known to be different in skin sensitivity. The transferof insensitivity and high BSR from side to side was used to elucidate the de-pendence of BSR on the degree to which a part of the body was more or lesselectrically "alive." He proceeded, by the ''known means," (apparently byplacing a magnet on the affected area) to transfer the anesthesia to the healthyarm, and found the BSR higher in the newly affected limb. When this transferwas performed back and forth several times, automatic alternations occurredwithout the magnet both in anesthesia and BSR. Gradually, the changes sub-sided; the BSR then became equal in both arms before the alternations in sen-sory disturbances stopped (Vigouroux, 1879).

Vigouroux' interpretation of his results gave rise to what was later (Landis &DeWick, 1929) called the "vascular theory" of the GSR: Vigouroux believedthat such sudden changes in resistance could not be produced by a local processin the skin itself, but were related to the fact that the sensitive side of the body


had become, as a result of some central process, a better conductor. The factorcontrolling BSR seemed to Vigouroux the "vascular tonus" which in turn deter-mined the "proportion of conductive fluid in the tissues." Such a vascular theorytied the phenomenon into the rapidly developing research on autonomic nervoussystem function in the control of blood flow. Since blood and lymph were thebody's principal electrolytic fluids, such a theory was naturally attractive.Vigouroux was primarily a clinician, and justified the study as valuable forelectrodiagnosis.

But the experiment did not provide critical evidence for the magnetic theorywhich had stimulated it. Charcot seems not to have been impressed with theresults. The spontaneous alternation without the magnet must have seemedespecially hazardous for the theory. Critical attacks on Charcot's position weredeveloping rapidly, even within France itself, and the issue was soon to be settled,with damage to his reputation, by the debate with the Nancy school whichcontinued well into the 188O's (Bernheim, 1884, 1886).

What are we to make of this experiment ninety years later? First, it has not,to our knowledge, been repeated using hypnotic suggestion to achieve the trans-fer, although such an experiment must have occurred to Charcot and should stillappear attractive to a hypnotist interested in demonstrating the range of phe-nomena encompassed by his technique. Second, and most important, Vigourouxseems to have demonstrated a phenomenon of adaptation of the BSR, a phe-nomenon known to occur under conditions of temperature change, seasonal vari-ation, and sleep (Waller, 1920; Richter, 1926, 1928; Neumann, 1950, 1968). Theremarkable discovery of such rates of change in BSR seems to have become con-fused by later workers with the phenomenon of the GSR (Landis & DeWick,1929; McCleary, 1950), which is a momentary resistance change as a responseto a sudden change of stimulation. As do most response systems, the electro-dermal response has its longer term adaptation-le\-el or threshold-setting aspectsas well as its short-term stimulus-response aspects. It is most interesting that itwas the former process which was first studied and which has been such a ne-glected aspect of work in the field, even in modern times.

Vigouroux' report suggests a rather methodical and somewhat prosaic ap-proach to science, and he seems not to be disposed to speculation or fancifultheorizing. For such ideas, we may turn to his colleague Charles Fere, who maybe said to have discovered what Gildemeister (1915) later called the GalvanicSkin Reflex (GSR).

FERE AND AROUSAL STUDIES

Fere was a neurologist and one of Charcot's most gifted students. F'ere andAlfred Binet were among those occupied with the task of defending Charcot'selectrical theory of hypnosis and hysteria and its magnetic and metallic arma-mentarium in the debate with the Nancy school. F^re, as a part of this activity,turned his attention to automatic movements, and both he and Binet publishedbooks on the subject (Binet, 1889; Fere, 1887). It was this work which led toFere's research in electrodermal phenomena.


Charcot had customarily used the hand dynamometer as a diagnostic tool inthe study of hysterical contractures, and F6r6 adapted it to a study of the effectof sensory stimulation and emotional arousal on muscle tension (F^r6, 1886,1887).His interest was in the central effect of peripheral excitation. He presented stimulito subjects while they gripped the dynamometer and noted the increase in pres-sure exerted. He found that the subjects' strength in the nonpreferred handincreased to a relatively greater extent under stimulation, decreasing the lateral-ity effect measured at rest. A range of stimuli in each sensory mode, i.e., sound,both pitch and amplitude; color and form; pain; tactile stimulation; and a varietyof gustatory and olfactory stimuli, were used. Experiments were performed onnormals as well as patients, and the effects under hypnosis were compared withthose under waking conditions. He was convinced that each sense had a lawfulorder of excitation effects, reporting that the magnitude of response to colorswas correlated with the wave length, being maximal for red and minimal for blue,and varied directly with intensity of the stimulus, regardless of sensory mode.Mental effort (arithmetical computation), emotion aroused by sexual stimuli,fear, or anger were reported to have measurable effects according to the degreeof excitation.

F6re proposed therefore, as general principles, that sensations determine thedevelopment of potential "psychic energy," that all peripheral excitations aug-ment this energy, which in turn activates the effector sj^stems in proportion toits intensity. Hence, "psychophysiological functions are reducible to mechanicalwork," i.e., under certain conditions the intensity of the stim.ulus, regardless ofmodality, directly determines muscle output through the effect of the stimulus asa general energizer. This is probably the first statement of an arousal theory, aswe now conceive of arousal, in the literature. But Fere's mechanistic and reduc-tionistic terminology^ must have made it unattractive to foreign workers, whowere, at the time, explicitly dualistic. An explanation in terms of judgment andresponse choice by the subjects would have been preferred by the English, forexample, even for those subjects who were hypnotized.

At about this time. Fere obtained as a subject a neurotic patient, an unusualcase of hysterical anorexia, who complained of the accumulation of electricaltension, crepitation of the hair, and tingling of hands and feet. Fere observedthese phenomena, and inferred that the effects increased under excitement,especially on the left side. The implications were important enough, in view of thepopularity of the "electrical bath," to induce him to seek out the physicist,d'Arsonval, the director of the Laboratory of Physical Biology at the University,who m.ade measures of skin moisture and electrical potential on the subject,attributing the effect to static charge accumulated by a person with very dryskin, possibly as an effect of friction of the clothing.

Fere presented a report on the case to the Societe De Biologie (Fere, 1888a),and Vigouroux and d'Arsonval offered critical comments a month later, theformer stating that the phenomenon of static charge accumulation on the skinhad been studied for a century, and citing several references (Vigouroux, 1888a).

^ Landis and DeWick (1929) state that these references are to earlier studies of the GSR,and McCleary (1950) apparently accepted their reading.


He advised that the subject be grounded adequately to eliminate such effects.Vigouroux apparently was not diverted by Fare's studies of the effects of discretestimuli from his view of the basal skin resistance as a diagnostic sign. In a paperpublished in the same year, he described a low skin resistance found in exoph-thalmic goiter (high rate of metabolism) and a high skin resistance on the anes-thetic and/or paralyzed side of hysterics and hemiplegics (Vigouroux, 1888b).

D'Arsonval, who had helped Fere in obtaining his electrostatic and hygro-metric measurements, also dampened Fern's enthusiasm (d'Arsonval, 1888).He distinguished between "physiological" potential differences, usually less than1 volt in magnitude, occurring in nerves and muscles, and the high voltagechanges following sensory stimuli found by Fere. D'Arsonval considered thelatter to be "external" to the S and purely physical in origin. He assumed thatthe patient, in response to sensory stimulation, did not produce new static elec-tricity, but already existing electricity became redistributed over the body sur-face, according to the "cutaneous secretion" which differed with the area of thebody. He believed, therefore, that a systematic exploration of the body surfaceby means of his newly developed apparatus, consisting of a hygrometer and anelectrometer with an unpolarized pointer as well as unpolarizable silver chlorideelectrodes, would contribute important new scientific insights. D'Arsonval is theonly one of the French workers to perceive the relevance of skin secretions forelectrodermal research. Both Vigouroux and Fere seem to have accepted thenotion of the body as a single conductor.

Fere realized the difficulty inherent in the interpretation of his data and con-cluded that further work with static electricity seemed fruitless. However, hestill felt that his dynamometric results with sensory and emotional stimuli werevaluable as external indicators of the excitation of the nervous sj^stem. There-fore, in a second attempt to relate these researches to electrodermal phenomena,he grounded the subject and imposing a galvanic current, presented the same setof stimuli to the subject, determining the increase in current fiow as the result ofthe discrete stimuli. This is the first study of the GSR (Fere, 1888b).

Fere noted as one instance of the effect, that closing the eyes diminished thecurrent fiow; he concluded that absence of excitation increased the SR, or, as heexpressed it, the greater "irrigation of tissues" caused the diminution of the SRwith sensory or emotional stimulation. He found his theoretical point of viewsupported by plethysmographic data showing an increase in the volume of thelimb investigated under the same conditions. He saw in his skin resistance data,confirmation for his previous dynamometric findings and additional evidence forhis arousal theory.

Fere's generalizations are based principally on data from hysterics. He notedthat the effects are less marked with normals, and the description of proceduresuggests that electrode placement, described as "two electrodes of the samediameter placed some distance apart on the anterior surface of the forearm,"may have contributed to these ambiguous results. While we may assume that heconsulted with Vigouroux or d'Arsonval in setting up his apparatus, he does notgive sufficient information on procedure for us to estimate the amount of current


used, current density, or amplitude of change in voltage or resistance measure-ments.

Fere's failure to continue his studies of these problems deserves some comment.His reports, other than those to the Society, are given in his two books (1887,1892). The latter work, translated and published in English in 1899, containsliteral reprints of his Comptes Rendus presentations of 1888 and 1889. His specu-lations regarding the first case, that involving static charge effects, seem to beresponsible for Landis' (1932) assertion that Fere exaggerated his findings tosuch an extent that subsequent workers may have disregarded them. The errorhere appears to be due to Fere's failure to edit the papers for his book in order tomake the distinctions between the two experiments which d'Arsonval had in-sisted upon. Landis would appear not to have examined the original materials,although his citations are accurate.

Our conclusion, based on an examination of Fere's papers published duringthe subsequent decade, is that he was not impressed with the electrodermalphenomenon itself. His reports of parallel work in reaction time, movement,and muscular strength (e.g.. Fere, 1889a, 1889b) are accompanied by extensivedata tables and considerable discussion. The skin resistance paper is, by com-parison, a brief and rather informal report. We may hypothesize that he did notwork enough with the method to develop an adequate perception of its possibil-ities, and even when other reports began to appear, he did not seem interestedin priority claims.

We should remember also that the conceptual context out of which the electro-dermal studies arose contained ideas and methods which had been under severe,and partially valid, criticism. Let us note that both Vigouroux and Fere initiatedtheir studies of skin resistance in relation to induced or spontaneous static chargeaccumulation on a patient. The successes of magnetotherapy offered a domainof phenomena to which electrodermal measurements might be related. But power-ful evidence, based on identical cures with placebo magnets or metals of woodand bone, with "blind" controls, etc., had begun to move that domain into therealm of psychological processes. Charcot and his followers had begun to feeluncomfortable about these matters, and to withdraw from further work withthem.

Fifteen months after Fere's report, Comptes Rendus published a paper by Jeande (Ivan) Tarchanoff (1889), reporting a series of observations of skin potentialchanges as a function of psychological stimulation. Fere published no commenton Tarchanoff's report, and did no further work on the problem thereafter. Thesignificance of Tarchanoff's work will become clearer after a discussion of earlierreports in the German literature, particularly the work of Hermann.

HERMANN AND ELECTROPHYSIOLOGY

In Switzerland and in Germany the physiology of action currents was beingactively studied. DuBois-Reymond had found a steady current in the skin of thefrog, which was directed from the outside to the inside (then called positive oringoing). He hypothesized some connection of this force with the secretory organsof the skin, since it was absent in the glandless skin of the fish (Hermann, 1878a).


Subsequent workers described a "negative deviation" of this "resting current"when motor nerves were stimulated, and assumed it to be a muscle current.

One of DuBois' experiments was widely quoted by subsequent workers; whena person slowly contracted his hand, an "ingoing" current could be detected withelectrodes placed on the palm of *S's hand (DuBois, 1848-49, Vol. II, p. 274).DuBois had a hunch that this current might have something to do with the sweatglands, but later considered it to be a negative deviation of a muscle action poten-tial, an opinion shared by most other workers at the time.

Hermann, at Zurich, was not satisfied with this interpretation. He developedthe hypothesis that the excitation current was secretory in nature, and per-formed an experiment to isolate the excitation current from the permanent or"resting" current. Using a preparation of skin from the back of a frog with nervesattached, and compensating for the resting current, Hermann stimulated thenerves and obtained a "beautiful, strong" ingoing—that is, positive—skin cur-rent (1878b). Experiments with curarized frogs or with toads gave the sameresults. In toads, he could even observ^e little drops of a milky secretion comingout of the glands under nerve stimulation. Since he had balanced out the originalresting current, he concluded that the additional excitation current must be dueto a change of the electromotor force, not of skin resistance.

Hermann was not sure about the nature of the resting current, although he saw-some possible connection between it and the epithelial cells of the glands, butfelt more certain about the connection between the excitatory current and theglands. He, therefore, decided to call these currents "secretion currents," sinceone could see secretion after stimulation, but he did not rule out the possibilitythat they might affect the smooth muscles in the glands or some "end organs" ofthe nerves, since the current change appeared to be preparatory to the secretoryprocesses in the same way that the action potential of a muscle occurs duringlatency of the contraction.

He then studied the question of secretion currents in higher organisms, exam-ining a warm-blooded animal, the cat (Hermann & Luchsinger, 1878). The cathas sweat glands only on the footpads, where sweating can be easily aroused.When tied to a board, the cat sweated strongly, due to anxiety. With electrodesplaced on one of the plantar pads of each hind foot, no current was detected.After cutting the sciatic nerve on one side, sweating soon stopped at the footpadon the paralyzed side, and a current was found fiowing (within the animal) fromthe healthy to the paralyzed side. After cutting the second sciatic nerve, sweatingstopped in the footpad on that side, and no current was fiowing. The animal wasthen injected with curare and respired artificially. A faradic current (13 stimuli/sec) was applied alternately to the left and right sciatic nerve. Stimulation ofeach sciatic nerve in the curarized animal produced an "ingoing" skin current inaddition to sweat secretion in the corresponding foot. In order to prove moreconclusively that the current was truly a secretion current, atropine sulfate wasinjected: the latency of the secretion current increased, the intensity of thecurrent decreased, and soon both current and secretion stopped.

Hermann then reported experiments duplicating DuBois' "Voluntary Move-ment" experiment (Hermann, 1881). From observations on humans not pre-


sented in detail, he stated that: (a) secretion currents with tetanization mayoccur even if the nerve stimulation is so small that sweating cannot be noticed;(b) the skin-current in DuBois' experiment could not be obtained when theelectrodes were placed on the wrists (areas where sweating cannot be easilyproduced), rather than on the fingers (which sweat readily); and (c) electro-dermal response and sweating get stronger when the electrodes on the forearmare moved from the elbow region toward the palms. These three findings pro-vided the necessary physiological foundation for a theory of the GSR, althoughHermann did not specifically measure the response to psychological stimuli.

Hermann's w ork is of great importance for understanding the relationshipbetween SR and sweating and the relationships of bodily areas to both phenom-ena, later to be dealt with by several authors (Gildemeister, 1912, 1913; Leva,1913; Kuno, 1930, 1934, 1956; Wilcott, 1963; and Wang, 1964). His papers,unfortunately, do not appear to have come to the attention of the French workers.

TARCHANOFF AND SKIN POTENTIALS

The Russian, Ivan Romanovich Tarchanoff, was the first worker to coordinatethe German and French work, publishing the report in Comptes Rendus in 1889and following with an almost identical report in Pfliiger's Archiv in 1890 (Tar-chanoff, 1889, 1890). The first paper was not cited in the second and, until thepresent study was undertaken, was unknown to subsequent workers. This re-sulted in Tarchanoff's being given credit for independent discovery of the GSR(Veraguth, 1907; Peterson, 1908-09; Peterson & Jung, 1907; Prideaux, 1920;Landis & DeWick, 1929; Landis, 1932). It is quite likely that had the first reportbeen noticed, Tarchanoff's familiarity with the French work would have beenassumed. Brazier, crediting Tarchanoff with the discovery of the GSR, also citesa paper in a Russian journal (Brazier, 1961, p.88). Tarchanoff's casualness aboutcitations, although not unusual for the time, presents us with several problemswhich should be discussed.

Deferring the analysis of his electrodermal work for a moment, to considerhis career, we find him first publishing in Pfiiiger's Archiv from Cyon's laboratoryat the St. Petersburg Military Academy of Medicine (Tarchanoff, 1874). Hesigns himself Dr. Med. Johannes Fiirst Tarchanoff, from which we assume thathe was a member of the higher nobility, since the word Fiirst is usually translatedas "prince." This paper was translated into French and appeared in ComptesRendus some months later (Tarchanoff, 1875a), without citation of the Germanversion. This practice of publishing in more than one language Tarchanoff con-tinued throughout his career. It was not an uncommon practice at the time, andsince international tension between France and Germany caused workers toignore each other for patriotic reasons, it insured that one's research wouldreceive maximal notice. We next find him at Hoppe-Seyler's laboratory in Strass-burg, publishing a paper on bile (Tarchanoff, 1875b).

In 1875, Tarchanoff replaced Cyon as Professor at the St. Petersburg Academy.Cyon had held the chair only four years, having been appointed as successor toSechenov by the Minister of War, over the objections of the Faculty Council.The resulting political agitation was intense, and Cyon was finally forced to


resign (Khoshtoyants, 1964). A letter from Tarchanoff to Pfiuger's Archiv (1888)complains that Cyon had failed to give credit for assistance in research duringhis tenure, and suggests that bad feeling remained between the two.* In 1880, hepublished two reports in the St. Petersburg Medical Weekly on the use of thetelephone in neurophysiological studies. These came to the attention of Her-mann, who had published very similar material in the previous year, and Her-mann inserted a mild note in Pfiuger's Archiv implying scientific plagiarism andpoor ethics. Tarchanoff made an apologetic reply which implied neverthelessthat he had seen Hermann's paper, but thought it had lacked merit, and statedthat d'Arsonval, who had published on the same topic, had likewise not men-tioned Hermann's paper (Tarchanoff, 1880). He did not mention that Cyon hadpublished a paper on the same topic two years earlier (Cyon, 1878). This exchangemakes it evident that Tarchanoff kept track of both French and German litera-ture and profited from both. But he also specifically expressed doubt that Her-mann's theory of secretory action currents was correct. The latter comment seemsto have been meant to be insulting, and from the tone of his reply, Hermann(1880) interpreted it as such.

Tarchanoff was a member of the Societe de Biologie, having joined in 1876 andbeing carried on its rolls until 1905. We may assume that he received and readthe publications of the Societe, since he occasionally cites such references inother publications.

His experiments on skin potentials profited from the best of the French andGerman work. He seems to have changed his mind between 1880 and 1889 aboutthe relevance of secretion current, and using a very sensitive galvanometermeasured changes in skin potential rather than skin resistance. This was notreally an innovation since, in addition to DuBois' experiment, d'Arsonval had,according to his 1888 report, also made potential as well as resistance measure-ments, and Hermann's work was exclusively with potential change.

The list of stimuli included those listed by Fere, but Tarchanoff added to thesensory stimuli suggestions for memories of the stimuli and memories of emotionalresponses of various sorts. Mental arithmetic, which Fere had employed in thedynamometer studies but not reported in the skin resistance paper, was also used.

Though offered as reports of preliminary findings, both his French and Germanpapers seem very creditable pieces of work for the time, rather exactly reportedand with excellent summaries. The German paper especially is clearly writtenand well organized. He concludes that the phenomenon is highly correlated withsweat gland distribution, and believes it related to the action of secretory nerves.He says that the current apparently fiows from an area rich in sweat glands toone poor in them, even at rest, with marked changes upon stimulation. He statesthat the feeling of conscious effort or stimulus intensity on the part of the subjectis a more important factor than the amplitude of the movement which occurs or

* Cyon was distinguished for his research on autonomic processes, having received in1867 an international prize for the discovery, with Ludwig, of the inhibitory section of thecardiac innervation system, and his textbooks were highly regarded. Khoshtoyants (1964)gives the story of the controversy, attributing Cyon's appointment to his reactionarypolitical views.


the intensity of the stimulus which is presented. It is apparent from the reportsthat Tarchanoff is a highly intelligent man who knows he has hit upon an impor-tant research area.

It seems to us quite unlikely that Tarchanoff did not know of Fere's experi-ments, although he does not cite them. He appears, judging from the evidencein his polemical exchange with Hermann, to have followed d'Arsonval's researchrather closely. The list of stimuli used is very similar to that of F6re, except forsome additions. jXIost important, however, is that the paradigm of the experi-ment is very much like Fere's, and it seems to us most unlikely that such a com-prehensive "preliminary" experiment would have been performed de 7iovo. Fer^reports that he worked for some years developing the pattern of the dynamom-eter experiments. W hen we recall Tarchanoff's carelessness about citations andhis apparent willingness to risk challenges on these grounds, we can concludewith a fair degree of certainty that he was familiar with the French work.

There are some minor but rather amusing differences between the French andGerman reports. In the German article, he mentions the "beautiful experiment"by Prof. DuBois-Reymond, who was, in spite of his French name, known as aleading German scientist, and he also admits the correctness of Hermann'sinterpretation of the skin current, which he had strongly rejected in their earliercontroversy. In the French article, there is no mention of DuBois-Reymond, orHermann, but Tarchanoff states, as though this were his own finding, that "everymuscle contracted, requiring conscious voluntary effort, causes the (secretory)skin current." In the French report, the S is asked to "relax completely," but inthe German one, S has to be admonished to "self-control and attention." Aparagraph on clinical implications, rather in the manner of Fere, is added to theGerman version, and it concludes with the promise of further studies after sum-mer vacation, studies which never appeared.

Tarchanoff, familiar with both the French and the German physiologicaltraditions, was in an excellent strategic position to fuse the t\ o lines of thought.The French, thinking of the body as one conductor, had failed to take the inner-vation of the sweat glands into consideration. Hermann, interested in demon-strating secretion currents, had not paid attention to the effect of sensory per-ception phenomena at the human level. Tarchanoff produced a well organizedsummary of the knowledge available at the time in the form of an original study.His contribution was the application of Hermann's measurement techniques toFere's experimental problem.

The failure of subsequent workers to examine the French literature deservescareful comment. The history of the problem has been reviewed on a number ofoccasions, beginning with Peterson (1907). While the citations of the PVenchwork have usually been accurate, no one seems to have examined the Frenchperiodicals for additional studies. Tarchanoff's French paper was therefore un-discovered, and his association with the French psychophysiological work un-noted. Most unfortunate, however, has been the apparently careless reading ofthe French texts, resulting in misinterpretation of the research context andextent of the work actually performed. An opinion has prevailed (e.g., Peterson,1907; Prideaux, 1920; Landis, 1932) that the French work w as loosely performed


and involved observations only on pathological cases. An examination of d'Arson-val's reports (1885, 1888) could have conveyed an accurate impression of themethodological sophistication of the French group.

Tarchanoff's papers, as well as F^r^'s, were followed by several years of obliv-ion. Peterson and Jung (1907) remark: "Tarchanoff was evidently unaware ofthe extraordinary value of the investigations he described in his brief paper.Like many discoveries of importance, his remarkable work lay buried for years."A reading of Tarchanoff's text, however, leads one to conclude that he was notat all unaware of the possibilities implicit in the method, and believed himselfto be on the threshold of a major discovery. His failure to follow up his reportswith further studies is the fact which requires explanation, and may have beena factor in the reluctance of other workers to enter the field. It has not beenpreviously noted, however, that he failed to publish anything at all in Germanfor the remainder of his career, and his only publication in French is a note inComptes Rendus (Tarchanoff, 1895) on the muscular action of decapitated ducks.We have been unable to determine whether he published further work on skinpotentials in Russian or, indeed whether he may for some reason, have ceased tobe a productive researcher after 1890. An examination of Russian historical andscientific materials might provide some answers to these questions.

Sticker (1897) took up Tarchanoff's suggestion that his method should be triedon abnormal cases and tried to establish an "objective method to determinedisturbances of sensibility" in cases of anesthesia after severe organic trauma.To his disappointment, he found that he could obtain skin responses from anes-thetic as well as from healthy skin areas. But in a paper read at a Congress ofElectrologists at Bern in 1902 (cited by Veraguth, 1908), he presented a lessnegative view. He had found the skin response absent in an anesthetic area, ifsimultaneously the local blood vessels under the electrode had been damaged.He observed further that local treatment of the skin with extremely hot or coldwater was sufficient to eliminate the skin responses even on healthy areas, and hestated that the processes underlying the skin phenomena were complex: sensor}^stimulation, secretion currents, and local and general irritation of the capillarj^system all had to interact.

The second investigator to take up Tarchanoff's method, Sommer (1902, 1905),reported that the effect can be due to muscle action of the hands. Later experi-menters, Veraguth and Jung for examples, used tubular electrodes held in thehands. But pressure changes occur frequently with this method and resistanceand potential measures are affected. Sommer (1905) also observed an effect ofsensory stimulation on static charge distribution, the phenomenon that hadprompted Fere's discovery of the GSR; this is a problem which has attracted nosubsequent attention.

Sommer's finding that electromotor processes are stronger in the fingers (pre-sumably the fingertips) than in the palms is interesting. Regional subdivision ofthe hand has not often been made by later investigators; exceptions includeRichter (1943), Edelberg (1967), and Neumann (1968). Sommer (1905) alsothought Tarchanoff's secretory theory "unsatisfactory to explain all obser\^a-tions." Peterson and Jung (1907) charge Sommer with inaccurate observation.


presumably because he failed to note the difference in latency between movementartifacts and skin potential changes. A reading of Sommer's text, however, re-veals that he regarded muscular effects as a problem of control rather than asexplanations of the phenomenon, though subsequent writers have attributedsuch a theory to him (Landis & DeWick, 1929; ]\IcCleary, 1950).

VERAGUTH, JUNG, AND WORD ASSOCIATION

International attention to SR and GSR came mainly as a consequence of theexperiments of Veraguth and Jung. Veraguth contributed by giving it a nameand by systematic experimentation; Jung by applying it to his popular associationexperiments and by spreading the gospel to the Americans.

In 1904, E. K. Alueller, a Swiss engineer who had invented an electromagneticradiator, found changes in the bod}^ resistance to a galvanic current passedthrough the body, which seemed to him correlated with psychological processes.He invited the Zurich neurologist Veraguth to give him an expert opinion aboutthe phenomenon then unknown to both. Veraguth (1907) describes vividly howhis original incredulity changed immediately when he put himself in the circuitand observed oscillations of the mirror of the galvanometer other than thosethat he could produce by changing such factors as electrode contact. Fascinatedby the notion that he was about to discover a new important psychophysicalphenomenon, Veraguth rushed home to get his wife and tested her the samenight with ]\Iueller's apparatus, presenting sensory stimuli and arousing un-pleasant emotions. Each time, he noted a galvanometer excursion marked by adefiiiite latenc\' period.

In his enthusiasm, he apparently gave the engineer more information thanwas wise, because Alueller (1904) assumed a clinical role as a psychologicalexpert on the degree of "nervousness" of persons and published some eight arti-cles on the topic in Swiss, French, and American journals. Veraguth (1907)disclaimed any responsibility for Mueller's "interpretations, conclusions, andideas of a medical and electrological nature." While Mueller's claims for theclinical value of the method were exaggerated, he was the first worker afterd'Arsonval to give attention to the problem of the relationship of electricalmeasurement methods to the reliability of the data. He noted that alternatingcurrents produce different results and discussed experiments with various elec-trodes and solutions of salts to improve electrode contact. ]\Iueller's 1904 paperreported a number of phenomena and relationships, but cited no other workers,not even alluding to Veraguth who must have been involved since some of thephenomena are reported as having been observed on clinical cases.

Veraguth immediately began to study the problem, winning Swiss governmentsupport for the use of apparatus and later buying his own. Having finished aseries of fundamental experiments in 1904 and 1906, he examined the literatureand became aware of the writings of Tarchanoff, Sticker, and Sommer. Thisseems to have been a rather embarrassing discovery for Veraguth; he had toadmit that Tarchanoff and Sticker's results were phenomenologically parallelto his ow n, but insisted that they were "divergent genetically." He stressed the


differences in working with, rather than without, external current. The work ofVigouroux, F6re, and d'Arsonval was apparently unknown to him.

Veraguth gives the impression of an honest, hard working, dedicated scientist;systematic but somewhat narrow-minded and quite pedestrian in his style ofwriting; at times trusting other researchers too much, but also rather aggres-sive when his "priority" was called in question. Not only did he give Mueller toomuch medical information, but he also reported to his friend Jung (Veraguth,1907, footnote p. 390) an experiment using Jung's word association method. Jung,on the other hand, claimed later that he had suggested this combination toVeraguth. No public polemic developed between Jung and Veraguth; but whenSticker, in 1907 at the Congress for Internal Medicine at Wiesbaden, confrontedVeraguth with the statement that he. Sticker, had published "exactly the sameexperiments and results in 1897" and that the only thing new in Veraguth'swork was his photographic recording, Veraguth turned on Sticker all the gunfire ofEuropean priority fights (Veraguth, 1908).

Veraguth believed that he had found a new reflex, calling it the "psychophysi-cal galvanic reflex phenomenon," abbreviated psychogalvanic reflex (PGR). Heemphasized the importance of selective attention and of the arousal of an emo-tional feeling tone in the S in the production of the phenomenon, and concludedthat the PGR would have great significance for the objective study of psj'cho-logical, psychiatric, and neurological problems. His papers were complete enoughto allow other works to reproduce apparatus and procedures. But the motivationfor further studies was largely provided by Carl Jung.

Jung had worked since 1904 on association experiments, noting reaction timeand changes of responses during reproduction of the list to find "hidden com-plexes, connected with livelj^ feelings." When informed by Veraguth about thePGR, Jung grasped its significance immediately and welcomed it as a means toan objective study of the "complex" and its feeling tone. He replaced the cum-bersome photographic recording used by Veraguth by kymographic recording.The movement of the galvanometer mirror was optically amplified by projectingit on a scale fixed to the table. A sliding arm was connected to the Kymographtambour and moved by hand along the scale, tracking the mirror oscillations.He obtained some curves "of great interest" with a list of about 100 words, pub-lished part of his results (1907), and planned an extended research program,including abnormal psychology. He put his assistant, Binswanger (1907-08), towork and, more significantly, got some of his American friends interested, therebygiving rise to the large number of American studies using the PGR. The firstsuch American, Peterson, hurried from Columbia University to Zurich in thewinter of 1907 to participate in Jung's experiments as long as "the subject waswholly new" (Peterson, 1907); his enthusiasm quickly spread to workers likeMorton Prince, Rikscher, and Scripture, all of whom were in print with reportsby 1910 (Prince & Peterson, 1908-09; Ricksher & Jung, 1908; and Scripture,1908) and the flood of papers in the next two decades established the field as amajor research domain.

With Jung's association experiment, the electrodermal response became quickly


recognized as a way of revealing aspects of "mental" life. The psychophysicalparallelism accepted by many workers at the time could be illustrated by themethod. Purely mental events—thoughts, ideas, fantasies—were exposed, viaelectrophysiology, A\ithout the necessity of verbal report. Peterson (1907), in anaddress to the British INIedical Association, said of Jung's method, "It is likefishing in the sea of the unconscious, and the fish that likes the bait best jumps tothe hook." Moreover, "Every stimulus accompanied by an emotion produceda deviation of the galvanometer to a degree in direct proportion to the livelinessand actuality of the emotion aroused." These notions were widely circulated andrequired some decades to disprove or clarify. The "mind reading" view of theGSR has been responsible for much bad research and dubious application. It hasdirected attention away from other questions of importance, not least of thesebeing the nature of BSR and its relationships to other psychophysiological proc-esses such as sleep and arousal.

There can be no doubt, however, that the application of electrodermal measure-ment to the indexing of "mental events" was responsible for the rapid develop-ment of research in the early years of the present century. As the structure andfunctioning of the electrodermal system have been revealed by concurrent basicresearch, however, its nature appears to be both more simple and more profoundthan Peterson conceived it to be: Its connection to the "sea of the unconscious"is incidental to its functioning as an autonomic reflex; according to some workers,it is at present probably the one most completely understood, and is perhapsthe most readily accessible and simplest indicator of arousal (Wang, 1957). Forthese reasons, it is especially appropriate as a means of studying the conditioningprocess, within which domain the phenomena in which Peterson was interestedseem to lie.

CONCLUSIONS

Our first question had to do with the conceptual ecology out of which researchon the EDR emerged. As we have seen, Vigouroux' experiment was stimulatedby an out-of-date theory which Charcot was attempting to justify. It was afailure as a test of theory, and remarkable in the information it provided. Butno one was prepared to use the information, and the embarrassment subsequentlyassociated with the theory made it easy to forget the results of the study.

Fere, however, initially studied the phenomenon as an arousal indicator. Wemight therefore modify our original question regarding the premature develop-ment of a scientific concept to include his arousal theory. What sort of nicheexisted for this notion in the intellectual environment of the time? Two classesof observations are relevant, the flrst having to do with Fere's own conceptionsand intentions, and the second with contemporary physiological theory.

Fere was interested in "automatic" movements as these appeared underhypnosis or in hysterical seizures. His notion that peripheral sensations augmentpsychic energy was offered to account for these phenomena. At the same time,he was apparently convinced that the augmentation had wider signiflcance asan approach to a theory of motivation. He offers evidence, some of which (tojudge from subsequent work) was probably artifactual, that a diminution of the


effect occurred under unpleasant stimulation, and claimed therefore to havesupported Darwin's hedonic theory. This was certainly a creative and forwardlooking inference, and might be taken as a preliminary version of modern arousaltheory. But the simplistic form in which it was proposed must have seemedstrange to workers at the time, and the dualistic metaphysics of the period wasnot called into question by these notions, but rather was supported by the formin which Fere offered them.

Moreover, the attempt to show effects similar to the automatic motor inner-vations, by means of an autonomic response measured by skin resistance, wasrather inconsistent with the physiological theory of the time, which held thatthe autonomic and somatic reflex systems were independent.'^ Fere's attempt togeneralize his concept to an autonomic response was based on Claude Bernard'scomments on the cardiovascular and pupillary responses to sensory excitations.Bernard's comments were supported by Fere's clinical observations and hisknowledge of Vigouroux' results which had been interpreted as due to cardio-vascular effects. There was no generally accepted theoretical reason for assumingthat the arousal experiment would work in the same way with an autonomicresponse. Hence Fere, motivated by an advanced theory, was unable to interprethis ambiguous data and failed to put the blame on his methodology, where itbelonged.

Yet it cannot be denied that the first research with electrodermal phenomenawas quite relevant to our current conceptions of arousal, focussing on the inner-vation of the response (Hermann), its adaptational characteristics (Vigouroux),and its relationships to sensory input (Fere and Tarchanoff). It seems equalh'clear that the conceptual ecology of the time had no place for the phenomenon,since only the mechanism of its innervation at the spinal level could be encom-passed within physiological theory. But the most important historical factor maywell have been the failure of international communication between German andFrench workers. In this respect, our story has implications for those concernedwith the universal aspects of science.

It should be noted also that it was not interest in the phenomenon itself whichled to the rapid development of research after redisco\'ery, but the possibilityof application to medical diagnosis (Sticker and Sommer), and the applicabilityto studies of mental processes (Veraguth and Jung).

The rediscovery of the GSR, therefore, had little of the conceptual signiflcancewhich guided the original experiments. The word-association experiments pro-vided an attention-getting stimulus which helped to motivate the basic researchstill to be undertaken. But this was true also of the electrotherapy and diagnosis,out of which its discovery originally came. The conceptual gap between Charcot'selectromagnetic theorj^, which led to Vigouroux' experiment, and the sensoryarousal theory, which led to Fare's, seems to us vast indeed. One generation maymake giant strides in the development of ideas, but their integration into intel-lectual life is often limited by their precursors.

^ The long-standing acceptance of the independence and inferiority of the autonomicnervous system is discussed by Miller (1969), who attributes spurious distinctions betweeninstrumental and classical conditioning to the persistence of the idea.


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the early history of electrodermal research

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