Practical Massage and Corrective Exercises

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PRACTICAL MASSAGE AND CORRECTIVE EXERCISES. CHAPTER I. Massage is a very much misinterpreted word and frequently erroneously used, sometimes intentionally, but often by mistake. It means knecuiing, or a mechanical action?a handling and manipulating?of the flesh, as in stroking, pressing, kneading,...
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Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: PRACTICAL MASSAGE AND CORRECTIVE EXERCISES. CHAPTER I. Massage is a very much misinterpreted word and frequently erroneously used, sometimes intentionally, but often by mistake. It means knecuiing, or a mechanical action?a handling and manipulating?of the flesh, as in stroking, pressing, kneading, percussing, etc., for a therapeutical purpose. In certain cases massage proper is all which is needed, but very frequently it must be used together with passive and resistive exercises, and in such cases massage becomes a part of Medical Gymnastics, Mechanotherapy, Swedish Movements, or whatever name one prefers to give; they all mean the same thing. The attempts made by certain authors to separate massage from medical gymnastics, and especially, while doing so, attacking messieurs the gymnasts (Dr. Kleen) as overanxious to secure all possible recognition, are rather ill-chosen, and prove that those authors do not know gymnastics and only a part of massage, viz., that small part which can produce a cure without any exercises. A first-class masseur nowadays must necessarily know gymnastics, and a medical gymnast surely knows massage. In these lessons then we will consider massage together with such gymnastic exercises as are necessary in order to do the most good for the patient. Let us, however, be frank and come to a full understanding of what we are trying to do. It would be impossible for anyone to gain a thorough knowledge of this system, and how, under- standingly, to give a full treatment, from a few lessons or a brief manual. But there are hundreds of cases where massage, together with a few passive and resistive movements, and also active corrective exercises, will not only give a great relief, but even effect a cure, when applied judiciously and accordi...