This book is a systematic summing-up of the achievements of Chinese massotherapy and a comprehensive and detailed research into its academic origin and development, basic theories, fundamental knowledge, basic manipulations, physical exercises, and its concrete application in clinical practice and health maintenance. It includes the main massotherapic works and a wealth of other documents of the various periods in China, brings together the fruits of modern massotherapic research from home and abroad in the past five decades, summarizes the clinical experience of massotherapists of various periods, and brings to light hundreds of almost-lost methods of treatment. It is no exaggeration to say that this book is an omni-directional, high-level and wide-ranging crystallization of the contents and characteristics of Chinese massotherapy.

PART ONE HISTORICAL SURVEY
PART TWO FUNDAMENTALS
PART THREE MERIDIANS AND ACUPUNCTURE POINTS
PART FOUR MANIPULATIONS
PART FIVE HERBAL MASSOTHERAPY
PART SIX PHYSICAL EXERCISES
PART SEVEN MASSOTHERAPY THREATMENT FOR INJURIES AND DISEASES
PART EIGHT HEALTH PRESERVATION

PART ONE HISTORICAL SURVEY

It is really hard to explore the origin of Chinese massage because it is too remote from the civilized society to trace massotherapy back. massage, after all, is a healing skill and art of the hand. If the ancient therapeutic techniques such as Chinese acupuncture-moxibustion and drugs must depend upon the external material conditions to a certain extent, man can carry on the most primitive medical activity only by using his hands.

In the ancient Chinese literature written tow thousand years ago ,the name of a famous doctor in remote times, Yu Fu, sometimes appeared. In Records of the Historian written by Sima Qian, Yu Fu was praised for his treatment of disease not by applying herbal decoction or medicinal wine but by massage. For instance, as the book describes, he could skillfully perform a surgical operation by opening the chest with a stone knife and administered massage for the heart that had suddenly stopped beating. This legendary doctor with miraculous skill, who lived in the Yin Dynasty (c. 13th century B.C.), can be called the first massage doctor in China.