Medicinal gymnastics were that part of gymnastics that taught the method of preserving and restoring health by means of exercise.

Herodicus of Lentini (historically Leontini) in Sicily, born some time before Hippocrates and his contemporary, was asserted by Plato to be the inventor of medicinal gymnastics , daughter of military gymnastics . Herodicus was a physician and moreover master of an academy where young people came to exercise for the public games that were celebrated in various places in Greece with such solemnity. See Gymnastic (Games).

Having noted that the young people whom he had under his supervision and who learned his exercises were generally in very good health, Herodicus at first imputed this good fortune to the constant exercise that they did; then he pushed this first reflection, which was quite natural, further, and became convinced that exercise could produce many other advantages if it were done simply for the purpose of acquiring or preserving health.

On these principles, he left behind military gymnastics and that of athletes in order to devote himself exclusively to medicinal gymnastics , and to develop for it the rules and precepts that he thought necessary. We do not know what these rules were; but apparently they concerned, on one hand, the different sorts of exercises that one could practice for health, and on the other, the precautions that should be taken with respect to differences in sex, temperament, age, climate, season, illnesses, etc. Herodicus undoubtedly also regulated nutrition and abstinence with respect to the different exercises that one did, such that his gymnastics included Dietetics, that part of Medicine previously unknown, and which was subsequently very much cultivated.

Ideas that were so wise were seized by Hippocrates, who did not fail to use gymnastics for various maladies. All the physicians who came after him would appreciate this type of medicine so much that there was not a single one of them who did not consider it an essential part of the art. We do not have the writings of Diocles, Praxigorus, Philotimus, Asclepiades, or several others who treated this subject, but what can be found in Galen and in other authors who cite those we have just named is sufficient to justify the esteem in which medicinal gymnastics was held by the ancients.

Physicians were not the only people who recommended it; everyone in general was so strongly convinced of the utility to be drawn from it that there were countless people who spent part of their life in exercise spaces called gymnasia . It is nevertheless true that these places were dedicated as much to athletic gymnastics as to medicinal gymnastics . See Gymnasium.

The exercises that were done there consisted in walking down covered and uncovered paths; playing with paddles, rackets, and balls; throwing the javelin, drawing the bow, fighting, dancing, running, horseback riding, etc.

Some of these exercises were practiced by all sorts of people for their health; but the apartments designated for this last usage were the bathhouses, where one undressed, where one was scrubbed, rubbed with instruments made expressly for this purpose, and anointed with certain drugs, etc. Each person made use of these exercises as he pleased; some took part in only one of them, while others took part in several of them in succession. The men of letters began by listening to the philosophers and savants who went there; then they had fun doing racket sports, or perhaps they exercised in some other fashion, and afterwards they entered the baths. There is nothing more natural than this type of medicinal gymnastics ; every judicious man must prefer it to that which consists of the use of medicines, because the latter is always palliative, disagreeable, and often dangerous.

The Romans did not begin to build exercise spaces until long after the Greeks; but they surpassed them significantly, both in the number and magnificence of the buildings, as can be judged by the descriptions of writers and by the ruins that still exist. People were so enamored of them in Rome that, according to a remark by Varro, although each person had his own, they were hardly satisfied with them. [1]

Medicinal gymnastics had already fallen into trivial details as numerous as they were frivolous, as shown by the advice given in the three books called on diet , falsely attributed to Hippocrates. They deal only with the different times that are appropriate for exercise. They indicate if it should be done fasting or after having eaten; in the morning or the evening; in fresh air, in sunshine or in shade; if one should be naked (that is, without a coat), or if one should be clothed; when it is appropriate to go slowly and when it is necessary to go fast or to run. This same work treats several other minor things, such as a game played with the hands and fingers which is claimed to be good for health, and which was called chironomy . A type of suspended ball was also discussed there that was called a corycus and was pushed with the arms with all one’s strength. [2]

But as the baths were the main component of medicinal gymnastics , as well as the custom of being rubbed down and anointed, it came about that the application of oils, unguents, and liquid perfumes that were used, either before or after the bath, or at other points, occupied as many people among the Romans during the period of their decadence as did the baths themselves.

Those who made a profession out of prescribing these unguents or these oils to the sick and to healthy people were called Jatraliptae , which means doctors of unguents . They had working under them people called unctores , who sole job it was to anoint, and who must be distinguished not only from the unguentarii , or vendors of oils and unguents, but also from the olearii , who were slaves who carried the perfume jars for their masters when they went to the baths.

Before and after being anointed, the skin was rubbed and scraped. This was the job of the rubbers [ frotteurs ], fricatores . They used an instrument for this called a strigil made expressly to scrub the skin, to get rid of the excess oil, and even the dust with which one was covered when one wished to fight or engage in some other form of exercise. See Strigil.

This was not all; the jatraliptes had under them the people who were involved in gently manipulating the joints and other parts of the body in order to make them more flexible; these were called tractatores . These are the people Seneca is talking about when, indignant about the abuses that were committed in this regard, he says:

“Must I give my joints to be softened to these effeminates? Or must I suffer some little woman [ quelque femmelette ] or some man transformed into a woman, to extend my delicate fingers? Why would I not consider happier a Mucius Scaevola who massaged the fire just as easily with his hand as if he were extending it to one of those people who practiced the art of manipulating the joints?”

What put Seneca in a bad mood against this sort of remedy and against those who practiced it, is that they did it for the most part with affectation and delicacy.

To say something more shameful here, the men employed for this use select women called tractatrices ; I need no greater proof of this depravity than Martial’s epigram against a rich voluptuary of his day:

Percurrit agile corpus arte tractatrix. Manumque doctam spargit omnibus membris. Book III. Epigram 81 . [3] 

Finally, in this form of luxury, since oils, unguents, liquid perfumes, could not be administered conveniently without removing the hair, depilation was done diligently with tweezers, pumice stones, and all sorts of artfully concocted depilatories. The men who did this work were called dropacistae and alipilarii , and the women picatrices and paratiltriae . Thus gymnastic medicine, simple at the beginning, became bogged down in minutiae in its practice, and ended up degenerating into luxurious refinement, softness, and voluptuousness.

1. The reference is probably to Marcus Terentius Varro (116 – 27 BCE), described by one biographer as “the most notable polymath of the Roman World.” David Butterfield, Marcus Terentius Varro, in Oxford Bibliographies.

2. “Corycus, the use of which is spoken of by Hippocrates under the title of corycomachy, was a hanging bag or large ball of leather, filled with fig-tree dust or with flour for the more delicate, and with sand when used by the more robust.” For a full description of the exercise see John Bell, “Report on Physical Education,” Transactions of the Medical Society of the State of Pennsylvania at its sixteenth annual session (Altoona, June 1865), 4th series, pt. 1 (Philadelphia, 1865): 276.

3. “With her nimble art a shampooer runs over his body, and spreads her skilled hand over all his limbs.” Martial, Epigrams, trans. Walter C. A Ker, 2 vols. (London and New York, 1919), 1:215; book III, epigram 82.