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MASSAGE  HISTORY

Massage has been practiced since ancient times, from indefinite times, among all peoples, we can say, on a planetary level. From time immemorial, massage was practiced without knowing its precise physiological and medical effects, without a specified methodology, but with recognized and appreciated beneficial effects.

For thousands of years, the application of hands to painful places, in order to remove the harmful effects of unknown sufferings, produced favorable subjective effects.

This empirically used procedure was widely spread in China, India, Egypt and other peoples of the distant past who had reached a high degree of civilization and culture.

Numerous documents from the history of ancient Egypt and about traditional Chinese medicine attest that massage was used for medical purposes for over three thousand years; in Kung-fu (2700 BC) the first technical details and indications are found – in China there were masseurs, in addition to herbalists (plant treatments) and acupuncturists.

In ancient India, massage consisted of smoothing, pressure and kneading of the soft parts starting with the face and ending with the limbs; Ayur Veda (18th century BC), among Indians, contains, among other things, advice on hygiene of life and for the application of massage, which has a hygienic and ritual character.

For the first time in history, the ancient Greeks used massage as a means of physical training of different categories of athletes (Prof. dr. Adrian lonescu). Herolidos of Lentini and Hippocrates described the effects and indications of massage, as well as its medical prescriptions.

The Romans spread and progressively developed massage, adopting it from the slaves of the subjugated peoples (especially from the Greeks).

Galenus, a Roman physician of Greek origin, described the main massage maneuvers: frictions, smoothing, pressures and squeezing, graded according to the intensity of the application and the duration of the sessions. From this written evidence, we can know how old the practice of manual massage for medical purposes is.

After the long and disastrous decline of civilization that encompassed and characterized the European Middle Ages, the merit of the Arab influence that penetrated the southwest of our continent followed, in the re-actualization of the role and beneficial effects of massage (the most prominent representative, Avicenna – years 980-1037).

After the “dark” centuries of the civilization of the Middle Ages, in the 16th century, mentions of the beneficial effects of massage reappear, due to Hieronymus Mercurialis from Venice.

Since the 18th century, in advanced European countries (Sweden, France, England, Germany), the role and effects of massage have been re-evaluated, and its scientific foundations have begun to be laid.

At first gradually and then rapidly, various representatives of these nations and schools substantiate and spread the techniques of manual massage (medical and sports).

The most well-known and practiced type of traditional European massage is Swedish massage, developed by the student Per Henrik Ling in Sweden in 1830.

The first experimental research aimed at scientifically establishing the effects and indications of massage for the healthy and sick body was carried out and published in the 19th century.

Manual massage is the oldest, most widespread and effective form of approaching the soft parts of the human body; the hand (of the masseur), through its multiple properties, “becomes, through long practice, the most valuable and efficient massage device” (Dr. Adrian Ionescu).

Long medical practice has proven over time that any mechanically or electrically operated device, mechanism, instrument or apparatus, no matter how ingenious it was and is designed, cannot replace manual massage and cannot achieve its medical and sporting effects.