Cupping is an alternative medicine therapy that uses glass, earthenware or bamboo cups affixed to the skin to achieve healing. The idea is to draw out the cause of various ailments using suction. Such celebrities as Jennifer Aniston and Gwyneth Paltrow have been public advocates for cupping’s benefits.

The practice is ancient. Cupping is believed to date back to 3,000 B.C., when it was used in Egypt. One of the oldest surviving medical textbooks in the world, the Ebers Papyrus, describes cupping practices dating to 1,550 B.C. There is also evidence of cupping being used in China as far back as 1,000 B.C., while in Greece, Hippocrates used cupping during his life, circa 400 B.C. From there, the practice spread throughout Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

At least in Europe, cupping was believed to be derived from humoral medicine, a system that the ancient Greeks developed to deal with what they believed were the four humors of the body -- blood, yellow bile, black bile and phlegm. Cupping was believed to draw irritations and other problems from the body, which ancient people believed entered the body and caused pain and other ailments. Healers often used oral suction methods to draw out these influences, which were often believed by superstitious people to be the work of evil spirits.

Oral suction eventually gave way to the use of various primitive implements, including shells and animal horns, to achieve cupping. In North America, Native Americans are believed to have used the tip of buffalo horns to practice cupping. Suction was created by putting the tip of the horn on the body and sucking out the air through the tip. Bone tips were also used to achieve the effect.