History of Massage
The history of massage is as old as humanity itself. It is difficult to specify its birth, but what is certain is that it is a very ancient healing practice that spread in all cultures, from the East to the West.
In Egypt, for example, the priests treated the body and the mind by manipulation technique.
The Greeks recorded this practice and used it regularly as a ritual of physical maintenance. They treated the injuries of competing athletes using massage techniques. Homer recorded all this in his writings: in the Iliad and in his Odyssey he recounted how nutritious food combined with a good massage session and physical exercise provided
well-being and restored the wounds of war. In addition, it highlighted the importance of massage in the well-being of the human body. Do not forget that it is in Greece where the difference is consolidated in Is a massage really useful? cosmetics as a pure use, physical adornment and the importance of body care to improve health.
Another Greek historian, Herodotus, claimed that massage could cure disease and preserve health. Although modern medicine undoubtedly owes much of its trajectory to the figure of Hippocrates, who taught his students the art of giving massages and using the sense of touch to feel their patients and thus be able to offer a diagnosis. Hippocrates is the author of more than one hundred books on the care of the human body and on health, considering himself the father of medicine.
Massages have been used as a process cleaning, together with fasting and bathing, in order to prepare for many tribal rituals. This is how the Hindus understood it, who included it among the measures of hygiene and for the treatment of various ailments.
In Chinese culture it is known that the emperors counted among their entourage with masseurs who calmed their ailments. Chinese methods were administered by kneading and rubbing the entire body with the hands, applying slight pressure and exerting traction on the joints. Not in vain the oriental massage technique is today one of the most widespread for the treatment of all kinds of pathologies, along with acupuncture and herbal medicine.
Thermal baths and the therapeutic applications that were carried out in them were common in Rome. Almost all the citizens of Rome passed through these thermal baths where relaxing, stimulating and therapeutic massages were practiced. It was a parallel act to the bath and consisted of a series of frictions with fragrant oils and creams. The masseurs who performed them were almost all of them Greek or Egyptian. One of the characters whose name has come down to us was the famous doctor Galen, who became a gladiator doctor. His influence became so great that his teachings they dominated Medicine european for the next thousand years. Galen used vegetable oil mixed with water or beeswax for his treatments, which he applied as an ointment to his patients to treat various diseases.
In Arab countries, the public bath was cultivated as part of their ritual. Therefore, a wide network of public establishments or hammans was created, which were copies of the Roman baths. In the hamman, in addition to the bathroom, body massages were also received
The Middle Ages and the dark ages typical of that time, with a prevailing Christian religion that dictated its own rules, meant a setback in this area. It was not until well into the Renaissance, with the presence of Ambroise Pare, French surgeon and barber, that in the middle of the 16th century he wrote in one of his publications about the positive effects of massage and its healing effect. This led him to work for different European monarchies. It is at this time, with the invention of the printing press, that various treatises on health are written that helped the general understanding of the effects of their treatments.
In the 19th century, Per Henrik Ling founded a center dedicated to physiotherapy in Sweden. His teachings reached across many countries, to the point that many schools in Germany and the Nordic countries had massage as a subject of study. Many doctors took advantage of its dissemination for the recovery and maintenance of health, especially in problems related to rheumatism.
