CHAPTER VI.
MASSAGE.
How to deprive rest of its evils is the title with which I might very well have labelled this chapter.

I have pointed out what I mean by rest, how it hurts, and how it seems to help; and, as I believe that it is useful in most cases only if employed in conjunction with other means, the study of these becomes of the first importance.
The two aids which by degrees I learned to call upon with confidence to enable me to use rest without doing harm are massage and electricity.

We have first to deal with massage, and I give some care to the description of details, because even now it is imperfectly understood in this country, and because I wish to emphasize some facts about it which are not well known, I think, on either side of the Atlantic.
Massage in some form has long been in use in the East, and is well known as the _lommi-lommi_ of the slothful inhabitants of the Sandwich Islands.

In Japan it is reserved as an occupation for the blind, whose delicate sense of feeling might, I should think, very well fit them for this task.

It is, however, in these countries less used in disease than as the luxury of the rich; nor can I find in the few books on the subject that it has been resorted to habitually as a tonic in Europe, or otherwise than as a means of treating local disorders.
It is many years since I first saw in this city general massage used by a charlatan in a case of progressive paralysis.