Cupping Therapy Across Three Medical Traditions

Medicine Atlas

Cupping Therapy Across Three Medical Traditions

09/21/2026 12:00:00 AM

Four traditions, one technique

Cupping therapy's documented history runs across several separate medical traditions rather than one continuous line. The Greek physician Hippocrates used cupping for internal disease and structural problems as early as the fifth century BC. Roman surgeons applied it specifically as a means of bloodletting. In China, the Taoist alchemist Ge Hong documented cupping's use in the third and fourth centuries AD, and the practice was also strongly endorsed within early Islamic medicine, where Muslim physicians developed it further.

Still in use into the twentieth century

The practice did not end with antiquity. The physician William Osler, one of the founders of modern academic medicine, still recommended cupping for pneumonia and acute myelitis in the twentieth century. Chinese hospitals have used cupping as a formal modality of traditional Chinese medicine since the 1950s. Across every one of these periods the same basic technique persisted, local suction created with a heated cup against the skin, even as the explanation for why it worked changed from restoring bodily balance to, in mainstream medicine's current assessment, having no real scientific evidence behind it.

Where To Read More

Cupping TherapyHistorical and Premodern Treatment PracticeCupping Therapy, the subject entity this essay traces across traditions
HippocratesGeneralist and Primary Care PhysiciansHippocrates, cited for the earliest documented use in this essay
William OslerGeneralist and Primary Care PhysiciansWilliam Osler, cited for the twentieth century continuation of the practice