Gua sha therapy in Jacksonville or scraping therapy began as a type of folk healing technique. Its long history began in 1337 when a physician known as Wei Yilin wrote the book “Effective Formulas Handed Down for Generations” during the Yuan Dynasty. The book urges healers to scrape the surface of the wrist, knee, elbow, and neck of the patient with wet hemp until miliary cutaneous bleeding occurs. The body is then wrapped with quilts and thick clothes. Then, a decoction of fresh Chinese onion tea, fermented soybean and Chinese green onion, or little rice porridge is orally applied to the patient. The ailment will start to heal after the patient sweats. This is a great way to relax and loosen the skin.”
The book is an organized account of how scraping therapy is done. The modality involves scraping the surface of the skin on ailing areas of the body in order to loosen pores to eliminate any existing pathological maladies for the purpose of treatment.
There should be miliary bleeding in different degrees beneath the skin after the scraping. Gua sha was and is still used as a form of folk medicine by rural people for the treatment of bodily pain, acute enterogastritis, heatstroke, flu, fever, and the common cold, among others.
The instruments used in the procedure have smooth edges and include such things as buffalo horn, jade tool, bamboo plates, silver coins, and chinaware, lubricated with vegetable oil, alcohol, or water.
However, over the course of time, this ancient folk medicine procedure was eventually forgotten due to the accumulation of medical knowledge and the development of modern medical science. In rural areas where there was a shortage of modem medical care, this therapy was preserved. It is still used to alleviate simple uncomplicated ailments.
And although people living in the modern world enjoy good health and the comforts of civilization brought about by new medical skills and high technology, they still suffer from the damages caused by the side-effects of pharmaceutical drugs, ecological imbalance, and environmental pollution.
According to the Health Ministry of China, patients that have been hospitalized and died in recent years rose to 192,000 a year and were mainly due to severe drug reactions. Deaths related to pharmaceutical medications are ten times greater than the deaths brought about by infectious diseases.
Based on these statistics, it seems that there exists a new crisis in the field of medical treatment. People are starting to realize that the more advanced the procedures are, the more severe the crisis becomes. Therefore, medical workers are forced to seek out natural methods from traditional medicine this is where gua sha therapy comes into the picture. It is now being welcomed more and more due to its simple application, safety, low cost, zero side effects, and because of its obvious effectiveness.