What Is Massage?
The idea that touch can heal is an old one. Cave paintings in the Pyrenees show
that 15,000 years ago people treated injuries with what looks like massage.
References to massage are found in 4,000-year-old Chinese medical texts.
Hippocrates wrote, “The physician must be acquainted with many things and
assuredly with rubbing” (the ancient Greek and Roman term for massage). Some of
the greatest physicians in history advocated massage, including Celsus (25 BC–50
AD), Galen (131–200), and Avicenna (980–1037). Ambroise Pare (1517–1590) the
“father of surgery,” William Harvey (1578–1657), who demonstrated the circulation
of blood, and Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738), who introduced the clinical method
of teaching medicine, all utilized massage as a healing technique. Roman gladiators
were massaged before entering the arenas and eighteenth century Swedish cavalry-
men were rubbed down between battles. In the Middle Ages, Christians viewed mas-
sage as the work of the devil and many therapists were burned at the stake as
witches. Remnants of this attitude have continued into the twentieth century as
massage is sometimes assumed to be a front for prostitution.
The German emperor Frederick II (thirteenth century) was curious to know what lan-
guage children would speak if they were raised without hearing any words at all.
Stealing a number of newborns from their parents, he gave them to nurses who
physically cared for the infants but were forbidden to cuddle or talk to them. All the
children died before they could talk. This discovery was important: Tactile stimula-
tion can be a matter of life and death. (Cosmic justice came to Frederick in 1250,
when he suffered a wrenching bout of dysentery and died.)
Infant massage dates to ancient times. An Indian medical text from 1800 BC recom-
mends diet, exercise, and massage as healing techniques. The practice spread to the
United States in the 1980s after the publication of Infant Massageby Vimala
Schneider McClure, and Baby Massageby Amelia Auckett. Both women received their
massage training in India.
In many areas of the world, massage serves as an integral part of health systems. In
the former Soviet Union, Germany, China, and Japan, massage therapists work
along with physicians in the hospital setting as important members of the health
care team. In Germany today, doctors will write a prescription for 10 massage treat-
ments as readily as for a bottle of tranquilizers, and massage is covered by
Germany’s national health insurance plan.Massage in the United States.
Massage was introduced to Americans in the early nineteenth century by two New
York physicians who were trained in Sweden. The first massage therapy clinics were
opened by Swedish physicians after the Civil War and had among their clients142 ABSOLUTE BEGINNER’S GUIDE TOALTERNATIVE MEDICINE