From time immemorial people of all races have had some idea of the 
hygienic and therapeutic importance of physical exercise. Gymnastics 
in some form has therefore always been used, sometimes as exercise in 
the open air, sometimes, and especially in the ancient civilisations, as 
a more or less developed system of positions and movements. 

It has also been understood from time immemorial that many local 
and general diseased conditions may be cured or relieved by mechanical 
treatment of the soft parts in the form of movable pressure, by stroking, 
rubbing, kneading, as well as by clapping and beating. Massage, as 
well as gymnastics, is a very ancient form of treatment, so ancient that 
one may consider its history to be as old as that of mankind, and its 
beginning prehistoric. 

Gymnastics and massage, treatment by exercise of the motor apparatus, 
and treatment by manipulation of the soft parts have so much in com- 
mon that their history may well be given together. Both methods of 
treatment are practised by the same craftsmen, and have so much in 
common that unintelligent people who have used them both for years 
are often unable to draw a distinction between them which can be under- 
stood by people of ordinary intelligence. For the most part, nowadays, 
in all civilised countries a distinction has been made with more or less 
clearness between massage and gymnastics. 

It has been the fashion among historical writers on the subject to 
assert that the earliest writings on massage and gymnastics are found 
in Kong-fu's Chinese " White Books," of great but uncertain antiquity, 
as well as in the earlier of the Indian Vedas, called the " Ay ur- Veda," 
written by Susruta, the pupil of Dhavantare, who is said to have lived 
in the eighth century. According to Nebel, no clear expositions of 
medical gymnastics nor evidence of Chinese massage of remote antiquity 
are found in Kong-fu's work, and Daily's complaint against the Swedish 
gymnasts of having plagiarised from their Chinese colleagues is absurd. 
Neither has Professor Pagel of Berlin found anything on these subjects 
in the " Ayur-Veda," but this does not throw doubt on the fact that 
mechano-therapy, especially in the form of massage, is many years old 
in India, and probably also in China.