John Harvey Kellogg (1852–1943), founder of the Battle Creek Sanitarium and the famous cereal brand, holds a special place in massage therapy history because of his influential book The Art of Massage, which was first published in 1895. His book was a practical manual written initially for medical and nursing students, but was soon adopted by independent massage practitioners as well. Kellogg’s organization of techniques into seven categories provided a useful blueprint for defining hands-on skills. It became the template for Swedish massage across generations of practitioners.

Excerpted from The Emergence of the Massage Therapy Profession in North America (Curties-Overzet, 2015) by Patricia J. Benjamin. Find it at www.curties-overzet.com.