Roman
The Romans learnt many of their medical techniques from the Greeks. Galen, a notable physician to several Emperors in the first century AD, used massage to treat many types of disease and physical injuries. He cited Hippocrates saying "rubbing, if strenuous, hardens the body, if gentle relaxes... rubbing should be employed, when either a feeble body has to be toned up, or one indurate has to be softened, or harmful super fluidity is to be dispersed, or a thin and infirm body has to be nourished." Julius Caesar, who suffered from neuralgia, had his body ‘pinched’ every day to help greater blood flow and reduce fatty tissue below the skin. The wealthy would be massaged in their own home, by their personal physician, but many others received treatment at public baths, where both trainers and doctors plied their trade. Public baths were often funded by benefactors, so the entrance fee was nominal, hence baths were bustling places. Seneca vividly described the resulting din in his book Epistulae Morales LVI "I have lodgings right over a bathing establishment. So picture to yourself the assortment of sounds... I notice some lazy fellow, content with a cheap rub-down, and hear the crack of the pummeling hand on his shoulder, varying in sound according as the hand is laid on flat or hollow."
With the end of the fourteenth century came the end of the Dark Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance. The Renaissance brought along with it many great discoveries in the arts and sciences. In medicine there was a shift away from the centuries old teaching of Galen, and the spiritual basis for disease. Massage also became unpopular as Europe was overcome by a conservative and repressive religious dogma. Touching was not considered as part of the healing method as it involved corporal pleasures and these were considered sinful.