Some History on Cupping

The origin of cupping therapy remains in obscurity. The earliest recorded use of cupping that is from the famous Taoist alchemist and herbalist, Ge Hong (281–341 A.D.). Cupping therapy was used in Egypt dating back some 3,500 years, where its use is mentioned in hieroglyphics. Native tribes in all parts of the world used hollowed out animal horns to drain toxins out of bites, pustules and skin lesions from the body leading to the reference 'The Horn Treatment'. Bones, bamboo, nut and seashells and gourds were also use by these ancient peoples, and all are still in use today. Earthenware and iron were also used as cupping vessels before the invention of glass.

In ancient Greece, Hippocrates recommended the use of cups for a variety of ailments, while in the earlier 1900’s eminent British physician, Sir Arthur Keith, wrote how he witnessed cupping performed with excellent success. Suction Cup Therapies remained a constant in professional medical treatment throughout Europe. It was practiced by such famous physicians as Galen (131-200AD), Paracelsus(1493-1541), Ambroise Pare (1509-90) and surgeon Charles Kennedy (1826).

In China, extensive research has been carried out on cupping, and the practice is a mainstay of government-sponsored hospitals of Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The fundamental therapeutic value of cupping has been documented through several thousand years of clinical and subjective experience and has advanced its application to many areas.

Women healers in communities throughout the world practiced of use of cups to heal, passing down their knowledge to their apprentices and as family tradition. Cross cultural studies show that women represented a major source of therapeutic assistance in many societies. Reliable sources hold that cupping in throughout Europe, Africa, and Asia was usually performed by the women in the communities. By the thirteenth century, however, universities including medical studies in their curriculums excluded women. Despite the fact that non-official medicine has been poorly represented, women would have continued to play a major role in health care delivery. Had they been allowed to participate in the higher education arena, their contributions in natural healing modalities, and especially the safe and effective use and continuity of cupping practices, would have been more substantial than by their male counterparts.

By the mid 1800's, the Western Medical Fraternity was established and imposed their newly established scientific model of medicine, defining medicine by making the body transparent, focusing on and treating the inside, in preference to the outside. Because cupping (along with many other healing arts) is a surface treatment, it was inconsistent with this new paradigm, which moved away from hands on personal contact and manipulative therapies of generations past. Although the use of cups has remained popular throughout Europe, Russia, South America, Africa, Australia, the Middle East and Asia, the 20th century has certainly seen it wane in other Anglo-Saxon societies. Even North American Indians utilized Cupping with Buffalo Horn, seashells, gourds, bones etc., but as their culture was decimated and it's people hearded into "reservations", their traditions of health and healing were also destroyed.