Chambers's Journal of Popular Literature, Science, and Art, fifth series, no. 142, vol. III, September 18, 1886

No. 142.—Vol. III.
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SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 18, 1886.
A MODE OF MEDICAL TREATMENT.
Massage as a hygienic agent was practised from the earliest times, and is probably as old as surgery itself, or, as it would be more exact to say, as old as mankind. The word is derived from the Greek to knead, and the Arabic to press softly. A Chinese manuscript, the date of which is three thousand years before the Christian era, contains an account of operations similar to those of the present day: friction, kneading, manipulating, rolling—all the procedures now grouped together under the name of massage. The translator of this curious record, a French missionary at Pekin, finds it to include all the characteristics of an ancient scientific mode of treatment; and it has been wittily remarked, that however it may rejuvenate those who submit to its influence, the wrinkles of time cannot be removed from its own ancient visage.
With the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans, a form of massage was the common accompaniment of the bath, and was used as a luxury, as a means of hastening tedious convalescence, and to render the limbs supple and enduring. Rubbing and anointing were sometimes done by medical practitioners themselves, or by the priests, or sometimes by slaves. Herodicus, one of the masters of Hippocrates in the fifth century B.C., first proposed gymnastics as a cure for disease. He was the superior officer of the gymnasium at Athens; and by compelling his patients to undergo various exercises and to have their bodies rubbed, is said to have lengthened their lives, insomuch that Plato reproached him for protracting that existence, in which, as years advanced, they could have less and less enjoyment. He himself, by the practice of his own remedies, attained the age of a hundred.
The earliest definite information regarding massage comes from Hippocrates, who says: ‘The physician must be experienced in many things, but assuredly also in rubbing; for things that have the same name have not always the same effects, for rubbing can bind a joint that is too loose, and loosen a joint that is too rigid.’ He also used the word anatripsis , the process of rubbing up , and not down , although not understanding the reason of it, as it was not till five hundred years later that Galen pointed out that the arteries were not filled with air, as their name would seem to imply. Asclepiades was probably not far wrong when he founded his school at Rome on the belief that diet, bathing, exercise, and friction should keep the body without disease; and Cicero affirmed that he owed as much of his health to his anointer as he did to his physician. Plutarch tells us that Julius Cæsar had himself pinched all over daily, as a means of getting rid of a general neuralgia. Celsus, at the beginning of the Christian era, advised that rubbing should be applied to the whole body, ‘when an invalid requires his system to be replenished;’ and Pliny availed himself of a mode of treatment which was evidently much in fashion in his day, and derived so much benefit from the remedy, that he obtained for his physician, who was a Jew, the privileges of Roman citizenship. It is related of the Emperor Hadrian that one day seeing a veteran soldier rubbing himself against the marble at the public baths, he asked him why he did so. The veteran answered: ‘I have no slave to rub me.’ Whereupon, the emperor gave him two slaves and sufficient to maintain them. It is quaintly added to this story, that the next day several old men rubbed themselves against the wall in the emperor’s presence, when, perceiving their object, he shrewdly directed them to rub one another.