Exercise in education and medicine / by R. Tait McKenzie.

  • R. Tait McKenzie
Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Exercise in education and medicine / by R. Tait McKenzie. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    45/418 (page 45)
    CHAPTER III MASSAGE AND PASSIVE MOTIONS The word massage (Greek, massein, to knead) is applied to the systematic manipulation of the body surface by the hands in move¬ ments of stroking, pinching, kneading, and striking. Passive motion consists in the flexion, extension, and other movements of joints and limbs by an operator or machine, without the co¬ operation or resistance of the patient. Both have been widely used since the beginning of history. Travelers have brought accounts of their employment in Turkey, Africa, Siberia, Lapland, Japan, China, and the islands of the Pacific. The lomi lomi of the Sandwich Islanders is spoken of with enthusiasm for its power of relieving the stiffness and soreness of fatigue, and procuring rest and sleep. The process is described as varied among kneading, squeezing, and rubbing, now one and now the other, each region being manipulated in turn, beginning with the head and working down slowly over the whole body, until in half an hour the weariness has quite disappeared, giving place to a most refreshing sense of ease and comfort. The history of massage has been checkered. The priests of Egypt used friction and kneading for rheumatic pains and neural¬ gia, and the priestly caste of India have always known and practised it. The Greeks had a class of “padotribes, ” or physicians, who acquired great skill in the manipulation of the body, just as at the present time the call of the blind masseur is a familiar sound in the streets of Tokyo. The Romans followed the Greeks, from whom so many of their customs were borrowed, but with them it often became a means of escaping the more rigorous forms of exercise and of removing the effects of overeating and drinking, the forenoon of the luxurious patrician being devoted to the bath and general massage. It has had its eras of popularity and its