From Animal Horns to Smart Cups: A 3,500-Year History of Cupping

When swimmer Michael Phelps stepped onto the pool deck at the 2016 Rio Olympics with round purple marks on his shoulders, millions of people asked the same question: what is that? The answer was one of the oldest therapies on Earth.

Ancient Egypt and Greece

One of the earliest written references to cupping appears in the Ebers Papyrus, an Egyptian medical text dated to around 1550 BC. Egyptian healers used cups for a range of complaints, from pain to fever. The practice travelled to Greece, where Hippocrates described it, and later to Rome, where the physician Galen was an enthusiastic supporter.

China: horns, bamboo and Ge Hong

In China, the earliest cups were hollowed animal horns, which is why old texts sometimes call cupping the “horn method.” They were first used to draw pus from boils. Around 300 AD, the Taoist herbalist and physician Ge Hong (281–341 AD) wrote about cupping in his medical handbook, and he is often credited with helping it spread through Chinese medicine. By the Tang Dynasty, medical writers were describing cups made of bamboo and pottery, and by the Qing Dynasty (1644–1911) bamboo, ceramic and glass had largely replaced horn.

The Middle East and Europe

In the Arab and Islamic world, cupping became known as hijama, usually performed as “wet cupping,” where the skin is lightly scratched before the cup is applied. In Europe, cupping rose and fell in popularity for centuries. Doctors in Europe and America still used cupping sets of glass and brass into the late 1800s, before modern drugs and diagnostics pushed it to the margins.

The modern revival

Cupping never disappeared in Asia, and in the West it came back through massage therapists, acupuncturists and athletes. Today’s cups reflect that whole history:

Era	Typical cup	How suction was made
Ancient	Animal horn	Mouth suction or heat
Classical China	Bamboo	Boiling or fire
Classical China, Middle East	Pottery and ceramic	Fire
19th–20th century	Glass	Fire
Late 20th century	Plastic piston (pump) cups	Hand pump
Today	Electronic cups	Motorized pump, often with heat

At Medi Cupping Therapy we carry every generation of the cup, from traditional bamboo to rechargeable smart cups. In the coming weeks we’ll look at each one in detail.