References to massage therapy are found in Chinese medical texts more than 4,000 years old, making it one of the oldest health care practices known to history.
Massage has been advocated in Western health care practices at least since the fourth century when Hippocrates, the “Father of Medicine”, wrote “The physician must be acquainted with many things and assuredly with rubbing”. The ancient Greek term for massage was rubbing.
The roots of modern, scientific massage therapy go back to Per Henrik Ling (1776 – 1839), a Swede, who developed an integrated system consisting of massage and active and passive exercises. Ling established the Royal Central Gymnastic Institute in Sweden in 1813 to teach his methods.
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Modern, scientific massage therapy was introduced in the United States in the 1850s by two New York physicians, brothers George and Charles Taylor, who had studied in Sweden. The first clinics for massage therapy in the United States were opened by two Swedish physicians after the Civil War period. Doctor Baron Nils Posse Institute in Boston and Doctor Hartwig Nissen opened the Swedish Health Institute near the Capitol in Washington D. C.
While there have been periods when massage was placed on the back burner in favor of a new passing fancy, its resurgence in the mid-1950s, has elevated it to a successful discipline for alternative healing.
