Western Culture
The Chinese are credited with creating the earliest form of massage, India is also known for its long use of massage and in the 6th century AD, the Japanese further developed the art to manipulate energy within the body. From this beginning massage traveled westwards where evidence of its existence is found in Egyptian tomb paintings. Queen Isis (4000BCE) included massage as treatment for health & healing. While in ancient Greece (750 – 500 BCE) the health regimen included exercise, massage, fresh air, rest, diet and cleanliness. Exercise and competitive athletics was very important to the Greeks and this led to the ‘Olympic Games’ being held there every four years. It is said that wars stopped or were postponed in order for the games to proceed. At this time in Greece ‘Gymnastics’ referred to a combination of baths, athletics and massage that was thought to prepare a man for life and war. This combination was provided in the gymnasiums. Massage was one of the principal method of relieving pain for Greek and Roman physicians. Julius Caesar, it is said had a daily massage to treat neuralgia.
Hippocrates was a Greek physician 460 – 370 BCE who observed health and disease as a result of natural causes and not magic and the gods. He established medicine as science and the Hippocratic Oath that states that doctors must ‘do no harm’ is taken by all doctors of modern medicine. The main tenants of the oath are that doctors must:
‘Respect, honour and share knowledge with their teachers
Treat patients to the best of their ability and only with good intentions
Not to prescribe deadly drugs or treatment
Vow patient confidentiality’
Hippocrates made detailed references to massage around 400 BCE and promoted massaging towards the heart to aid circulation. He recommended that all physicians be trained in massage to promote healing, adjust the tension of a joint, and tighten, relax or build muscle.
"The Physician Must Be Experienced In Many Things, "but assuredly in rubbing.. for rubbing can bind a joint that is too loose, and loosen a joint that is too rigid" (Hippocrates).
His holistic methods included exercise, massage, fresh air, rest, diet and cleanliness. He promoted the concept that the body is capable of curing itself.
Asclepiades of Bithynia (124 to 40 BCE) was a Greek physician who settled in Rome and promoted diet, exercise, bathing and massage. He used movement therapies such as swinging, vibrations and massage. Between 25 BCE and 57CE Celsus wrote ‘De Medicina’ and mentioned that massage can
Tone a weak body, relax a tense body, headaches, paralysis, fevers, head colds, neck spasm, asthma, lung, liver and spleen disorders, intestinal distress, diarrhea, coughs, ulcers, stomach pain, joints etc.. (Braun & Simonson 2008, p8)
Galen (130 – 201 CE) was a follower of Hippocrates and revolutionized medicine by his work on anatomy and medicine. The experimental method of scientific investigation is said to be his development. He encouraged physicians to practice dissection to discover anatomy and emphasized the need to understand what was going on under the skin. He wrote about the benefits of morning and night massage, added descriptions of massage strokes and emphasized the need for muscle fibres to be rubbed in all directions and used oil for health and well being. However, with the fall of the Roman Empire Europe became a battle-ground with significant influence being exerted by the Church. Massage, like many medical and scientific practices, became suspect. The Dark Ages continued up to the 1400. During this time people who were involved in herbalism, massage and healing were often burned at the stake as witches or denounced as heretics. Church thinking resulted in massage becoming synonymous with witchcraft. However, eventually nuns were granted permission to use massage and baths as inexpensive methods of health care to victims of war in hospitals. Massage was seen as treatment for pain relief, increasing blood flow and for facilitating the healing process. To this extent massage was kept alive and used as part of medical treatments. These Dark times did not affect the Arab World and massage continued to flourish there. So while the western world embraced the techniques that came from the east and promoted massage, exercise and bathing, the Dark Ages almost destroyed them for 1000 years. It was only with the Renaissance that the techniques began to flourish again.
In the middle of the 15th century a period of rebirth and progressive thinking began in Europe that became known as the Renaissance (1450 – 1600). Medicine and art flourished side by side at this time. People like Leonardo da Vinci’s (1452 – 1519) and Andreas Vesalius (1514 – 1564) studied anatomy through cadaver dissection and both left a legacy of detailed drawings of the internal workings of the human body. Vesalius suggested that medicine went to ruin when doctors, despising the work of the hand, delegated to slaves the manual attention needed by patients (Braun & Simonson 2008). Yet, Ambroise Pare, a 16th-century physician to the French court, praised massage as a treatment for various ailments. Another event that caused a divide between the hands-on massage techniques and the learned doctors of the time was the Dualism Theory of Rene Descartes (1596 – 1650). Descartes drew a distinction between the human body and the human being, drawing distinctions comparisons between the body and a machine and stating that the mind was superior to the body. While his writings stated that there were interconnections between the mechanical body and the emotional mind his legacy was to cause a lessening of the value placed on physical endeavour and to elevate the workings of the mind.
It was the 18th century before the dogma and traditions of the church were challenged and a new Age of Enlightenment began. During this time a French Jesuit, P.M. Cibot translated ‘The Cong Fou’, an Ancient Chinese medical reference book, into French and this reintroduced the notions of the use of controlled breathing, systems of exercise and positions for healthcare.