During the Olympics, viewers noticed that Michael Phelps and other athletes had red circular marks on their back. The news soon came out that they had been using cupping, described as an “ancient Chinese healing practice.” My grandmother Teltsa, born in Poland but living in Paris, would have been surprised by that description.
Other swimmers as well as members of the U.S. men’s gymnastics team were displaying cupping spots. Some commented that it helped them recover from soreness faster and made them feel good.
My grandmother had six grown children with families of their own living near her. Whenever a family member was suffering from a cold, or bronchitis or another similar illness, Teltsa would run over, bearing her special little glass cups, a thin wooden wand wrapped in cotton at one end, and a bottle of alcohol. Teltsa worked fast. She dipped her wand in the alcohol, lit the end from a burning candle, quickly swept the inside of a cup with the burning wand and applied the cup to the patient’s back. She would do this a couple of times before extinguishing the flame, and then light it again and place more cups until the back was covered. As I remember, she did not leave the cups on long. By the time she finished placing the last one, she was ready to remove the first one. The result was a back full of puffy little red pillows of flesh. They did not last long, and the congestion cleared.
From some browsing on the net, I learned that the Chinese were, in fact, latecomers to cupping. The treatment is mentioned in an Egyptian papyrus, was used by the ancient Greeks and “recommended by the Prophet Muhammed”. What my grandmother had in common with the Chinese is that they too used it as to alleviate the discomforts of respiratory illnesses.
As to how Teltsa learned her skill, I found out in the Wikipedia entry. Maimonides wrote about the treatment in his book on health and thus it was used within the Eastern European Jewish community, the community from which she hailed.
Just in case you want to know more, I can tell you that a dictionary search informed me that you may use “cup” as a verb: to cup, he cups etc. but there is no such word as a cupper for one who performs the treatment. You have to say something clumsy like “practitioner of cupping” or, in my grandmother’s case, I would say “family healer”.
How effective was Teltsa’s remedy? I can only tell you that when my uncle Maurice had moved to America, he once asked his wife to give him a cupping treatment. She told me that she wouldn’t do it because she now had wall to wall carpeting and she was afraid of possibly causing a fire. And so American affluence caused cupping to disappear both as a family tradition and little by little as a topic of nostalgic conversation. Until it reappeared in the Rio Olympics, and now, not only the family, but everyone is talking about it.