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Hijamah can be used as prophylactic as well as mode of treatment for various chronic and acute illnesses as it restores normal equilibrium to the body. In Prophetic Medicine much emphasis has been put on cupping therapy and much and less 28 Hadiths have the description of benefits of cupping therapy. Muhammad (PBUH) himself underwent cupping therapy for prophylactic as well as therapeutic measure. Some Ahadis about cupping are worthy to note here:

Ibn Abbas (RA) reorted that Prophet (PBUH) said "the best time to be treated with cupping are the 17th, 19th, or 21st of the month". Tirmidhi, 2054

Anas Ibn Malik (RA) reported the Messenger (SAW) said " when the weather becomes extremely hot, seek aid in cupping. Do not allow your blood to rage such that it kills you".

 

Types of Hijamat (Cupping Therapy): Hijamat can be divided into two broad categories
=Hijamat bil Shurt (Wet Cupping), Hijamat bila Shurt (Dry Cupping)
=Hijamat bila shurt is divided into two- Hijamat Nariyah and Hijamat ghair nariyah.

Types of cups used
Horns, Bamboo, Pottery, Fire (cups), Metal Cups, Glass cups / Glasses, Suction cups (Glasses)

Historical perspective
Cupping therapy is being practiced nowadays in many countries all over the world including Germany, Norway, Denmark, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, India, China and other countries. German people are familiar with cupping therapy and so are Danish and Norwegian peoples where those European societies already have a shift in attitude to include complementary medicine within the conventional health care system.

The exact origin of cupping therapy is a matter of controversy. In the middle east, Arabic writers report that cupping therapy dates back to 3500 B.C. (5500 years ago), where Assyrians were the first Arab population to use primitive tools as animal horns and bamboo wood for cupping therapy then the Chinese physician, Jee Hong (381- 281 B.C.) was among the leaders in that art. Arabic civilization termed it cupping therapy; Ancient Egyptians were reported to practice cupping therapy earlier than many old civilizations, where cupping therapy was one of the oldest known medical therapies in ancient Egypt.

The first report of using cupping therapy in ancient Egypt dates back to 1550 B.C. (more than 3500 years ago) where drawings on the famous Egyptian papyrus paper (Ebers papyrus) and ancient Egyptian temples showed that Egyptians were advanced in treatment using cupping therapy.

Cupping therapy was also used in ancient Greek medicine. In 400 B.C., Herodotus (a Greek historian) recorded that the ancient Egyptian physicians who recommended the application of sucking cups to the body already used both wet cupping therapy and dry cupping therapy. Diseases treated by cupping therapy included headache, lack of appetite, maldigestion, fainting, abscess evacuation, narcolepsy (repeated sleepy desires) and others.

In 3300 BC, in Ancient Macedonia, cupping therapy had been used since prehistoric times to treat diseases and health disorders. In the United States, there is a progressive increase in the use of cupping therapy and other types of complementary medicine. In a recent report from Harvard medical school about pediatric patients suffering from chronic severe pain, authors reported that cupping and acupuncture treatment were pleasant and helpful for pain treatmnt.

Currently, most widely used practice for cupping therapy is in China. Cupping therapy is considered by Chinese to be part of the Traditional Chinese Medicine. Chinese hospitals recognized cupping therapy as a formal modality of treatment since 1950. Currently, medical practitioners in China and Mongolia are practicing cupping therapy for treating hypertension, neck pain, headache, chronic hepatitis, ophthalmic diseases, skin diseases and infectious Cupping therapy is a simple procedure in which negative pressure is applied to the skin through sucking cups (dry cupping therapy.

Many types of cupping therapy are described in the literature including dry cupping therapy, wet cupping therapy, medicinal cupping therapy, moving cupping therapy and others. The most important type of wet cupping therapy seems to be Al-hijamah (method of wet cupping therapy practiced in prophetic medicine). As we will show here, unlike most conventional treatment modalities, wet cupping therapy is an excretory form of therapy not an introductory one i.e. wet cupping therapy uses negative pressure suctioning and skin pricking to open the skin barrier and excrete a bloody mixture of fluids with soluble wastes and causative pathological substances (CPS).

Second negative pressure suctioning completes the process of waste excretion. Unfortunately, medical research related to cupping therapy does not cover its importance. Cupping therapy is practiced officially in hospitals in China and is considered very familiar in some European countries. Current methodologies used for cupping therapy differ according to the type of cupping therapy e.g. dry cupping method differs from medicinal cupping method. In this review article, we shed light Cupping therapy is effective in treatment of incurable medical conditions Cupping therapy was reported to treat medical conditions as herpes zoster, vitiligo, hypertension, rheumatoid arthritis, headache and migraine. Cupping therapy was reported to relieve pain of dysmenorrhoea, acute trigeminal neuralgia, chronic osteoarthritis, carpal tunnel syndrome, fibrositis, firomyalgia, cervical spondylosis, lumbar disc herniation, brachialgia paraesthetica nocturna, chronic non-specific neck pain, persistent nonspecific low back pain and pain of acute gouty arthritis.

Technical Methods Used for Performing Hijamah Before discussing the benefits or hazards of cupping therapy, it is strongly advisable to know types of cupping therapy and to revise the steps of wet cupping therapy to standardize the optimal protocol for cupping therapy. Taking Chinese cupping therapy as an example, many different types of cupping therapy are being practiced nowadays in official Chinese hospitals as.

Interestingly, when we reviewed the cupping methodologies reported in the literature, we found minor but important differences among the methodologies used for wet cupping therapy. Two distinct wet cupping methodologies were reported in the literature. Both methods are in agreement with each other as regard the starting steps, which include demarcation of skin points to which cupping therapy should be applied, followed by sterilization at these sites and as regard the last step, which is sterilization. They differ in the order and number of the steps of.


As per Kitab-ul- Hawi fil- Tibb

"Emesis is more useful than purgation in the management of sciatica, and it is carried out immediate after taking the meal, thereafter cleanser drugs are used, but when thick humors are stuck in hip joint that is the right time for cupping to be used necessarily, it is much beneficial for this condition."

"Those patients who are taking the drugs of hot temperament for their hip pain and morbid materials are adherent to the joint, cupping over hip and heavy enema that induces the bleeding, are useful for them."

"Cupping with scarification and without scarification will be done over hip in early stage of Sciatica, but when the disease worsens as becomes chronic, the purgation will be done with pure Citrullus colocynthis (Shahm-e-Hanzal) and Ayarij."

"Regarding Sciatica Sham'un said that cupping will be done over the site of pain."

"When Sciatica becomes chronic the patient walks lamely. Sciatica in left side is severe, in this condition administration of Ayarij and Citrullus colocynthis, and sietz bath in hot spring and application of cupping with fire over hip are useful. Some times leeches are also applied on hip and relieve the problem."

"Abu Abdullah was suffering from the pain of underside of the foot and relieved by cupping therapy over heel."

"The backache and hip pain may get away automatically when are followed by any one of the conditions like piles, varicose vein, jaundice and bleeding from the lower aspect of hip. However the treatment of this disease in initial stage is rest and massage with heat producing (musakhkhin) oil. Though the pain is relieved definitely with this treatment, reoccurs, in this condition, three days after the reoccurrence of pain venesection is done in opposite hand over two consecutive days and a little amount of blood is taken out. If pain is reduced then venesection is done again in the evening of same day to take out the fresh blood, but if the pain is aggravated, cupping with deep scarification is done on shank after four days and a large amount of blood is taken out. In order to perform the cupping the part where cup is to be applied is warmed up with hot fomentation and prevented from cold exposure. Thereafter cup is applied until the area becomes swollen, then the cup is removed and deep cuts are given and blood is sucked out forcefully by applying the cup again. Some physicians apply Leeches instead cupping."

"(To relieve the pain of hip and back) the abdomen, inguinal region and lumber region are fomented regularly by a piece of cotton soaked in lukewarm oil of Iris ensata (Sosan) or milk curd (Laban-e-Haleeb). Thereafter the cupping over hip is done repeatedly along with the local application of rubefacient drugs (Muhmmirat). This treatment cures the pain as never reoccurs."

"When the back pain or hip pain worsens, the cupping and rubefacient drugs are necessarily and repeatedly to be used."

"In case of sanguineous sciatica enema is more beneficial than purgation and when the purgation is to be done it should always be preceded by emesis and followed by enema through oils, cupping with scarification over hip and application of colocynth oil (Roghan-e-Hanzal) on the affected site."

As per famous book Ghina Muna

"When the humors become thick in the affected joint due to improper treatment cupping is very useful for this condition."

"Application of cupping with fire on the hip is very useful when the thick and viscous humors are collected there."

Kamil-ul- Sena'h

"When the disease grows longer and becomes chronic, the Ayarij Kabeer, enema of Qosa-ul-Humaqa and oily bread (Roghani Roti) mixed with Citrullus colocynthis are essentially to be used. The patient should be advised to plunge in sulfur water and salty seawater. When this treatment is unable relieve the problem, the cupping with fire (Hijamat -e-Nariah) is used and leeching is also useful as the leeches suck the material from the joints to the skin."

Al-Qanun fil- Tibb

"Anti inflammatory paste (Muhallil-e-Auram Zimad), Irrigation (Nutool) and water of black soil is useful, if this treatment fails to treat the problem then enema and cupping with scarification and without scarification over the hip are helpful".

"Some times materials become dry in the joint causing hardening of the joint and making it unable to receive the effect of drugs. In such a condition laxative drugs are used some times and cupping is also needed to take the materials out."

Zakherah Khawarzam Shahi

"Cupping under the treatment of pain of hip and heel (Waja-ul-Warik and Waja-ul-Aqib). According to him it is preferable to keep the patient on fast and advice him exercise after the general evacuation, if his lifestyle is sedentary. If these regimens are unable to relive the disease then only morbid humors are to be taken out towards the surface of affected area. This purpose is attained by cupping with fire, Seitz bath in sulfur water and corrosive pastes are very useful. Repeated attempts of cupping to suck liberal amount of blood generally relieve the condition by eliminating morbid materials from the joints."

"if the cause of heel pain is trauma and injury (Zarbah-wa-Saqtah) the Arminia bole (Gil-e-Armani) and meadow rue (Mamisia) are dissolved in plain or Rose water separately and applied as liniment (Tila) on heel .The application of chilled water is also beneficial and some times cupping may be needed".

Ikser-e- Azam

"Lastly those regimens should be carried out which have anti inflammatory and demulcent (Mulattif) effect and deep seated materials should be taken to the body surface. Cupping, rubifacient paste and the liniment of Allium sativum, Allium cepa, Narcissus tazetta (Nargis), Semecarpus anacardium (Baladur) and Ficus carica (Injeer) few regimens used for this purpose, but along with these regimens some laxatives also should be added in order to avoid dryness in the joints."

Mualajat Sharh-e- Asbab
Kitabul- Asbab wal Alamat was written by Najeebuddin Samarqandiin (13th "The treatment of sciatica is similar to that of arthritis in many aspects and to hip pain in few aspects........., thus cupping and leeching can also be regarded useful in the treatment of Wajaul-Mafasil."