Practical Treatise on Massage

An excerpt from this historical medical work reads, "A Careful study of the structure of the human body, its contours and conformations, together with the most agreeable and efficacious manner of applying massage to it, results in proving, either that the Creator made the body to be manipulated, or else that He put it into the heart of man to devise massage as a means of arousing under-action of nerve, muscle, and circulation Few there are who have taken any special interest in massage, but think they have improved it in some way peculiar to themselves, apparently unmindful of the words of the Father of Medicine who says that " Medicine hath of old both a principle and a discovered track, whereby in a long time many and fine discoveries have been discovered, and the rest will be discovered, if any one who is both competent and knows what hath been discovered, start from these data on the search. But whoever, rejecting these and despising all, shall undertake to search by a different track and in a different manner, and shall say that he hath discovered something, will be deceived himself and will deceive others." According to Hippocrates, then, not a few have deceived themselves and others in the use of massage from want of starting from previous data on the search. But so long as the patients are benefited, no harm has come of this."