Third: Timing of Applying Cupping operation

To Apply Cupping operation you have to consider four appointed times:

The annual time:

The Messenger (cpth) said: “How good the wont in cupping is!”

Thus, it is usually performed from year to year for both the healthy and the patient. It is a prophylaxis for the healthy and a medicine (treatment) and a protection (prophylaxis) for the patient.

The seasonal time:

The Messenger (cpth) said, “Relieve yourselves from the intensity of heat by cupping.”

Therefore cupping must be performed before the summer season because heat is most intense at this time of the year. Hence the best season is the spring.

Cupping must be performed every year in the spring season, namely in April and May (In Syria and other countries around it).

Before giving the scientific interpretation of this appointed time (its physiological effect on our bodies), we must give a simple glimpse about the function of the blood in regulating the animal heat.

As it is known water constitutes the maximum proportion in the blood, (90%) of its plasma. Since water has basic properties that differentiate it from other liquids known in nature, these properties make water the best assistant liquid to help regulating the animal heat in a living being. This property has a high faculty of storing heat than any other liquid or solid material. Therefore it stores the heat it receives in its passage through the more active and warm tissues and carries it to other tissues of less warmth in its movement through the various parts of the body. Therefore blood has (the proportion of water in its formation and its round trip in the tissues of the body) a high faculty in transmitting heat higher than any other faculty of various tissues in the body. Therefore blood is the first recipient and the first main influenced tissue by the outside heat (of all the body tissues) which is effective on the body. It sucks heat from the body tissues to transport it to the less warm ones, and vice versa it sucks coolness from the body tissues to transport it to the warm ones.

In view of the continuous blood circulation, it acts in regulating the animal heat by warming the cool parts or cooling the warm parts until the animal heat remains constant. The chance for cupping is realized two times in the year, i.e. in April and in May, and perhaps a third time in late of March if the warmth comes at the end of it with only the decrease of the crescent.

In this time of the spring, we trace the lunar month until it becomes the 17th day of it, and then one can undergo cupping operation in one of these days (from the seventeenth day until the twenty-seven day inclusive).

If he misses the first month, the advent of the (17th) of the next lunar month (in which cupping is permissible), he can also make up for the chance. Naturally, there are some irregular years when April is also intensive in chilliness, then we must wait until May, or we could perhaps perform the cupping operation in April.

If the (17) of the lunar month in April has cold weather, we wait until the weather becomes moderate and warm during the period of this lunar month (17-27) then we start cupping. Therefore, the matter is limited by the general rule which we cannot overcome for it is springtime (April, May and perhaps late of March and the early of June) from the seventeenth day until the twenty-seventh day of the lunar month exclusively depending on the rise in temperature in March and the drop of it at the beginning of June if both changes occur along with the decrease of the lunar month. In this way, we get use of one-third of the year to perform the cupping operation.

The Monthly Time:

The Messenger of God (cpth) said, “Cupping is most detestable at the beginning of the crescent, but it is curing when the full moon begins to decrease.”

Therefore, we must follow up the recommendation of the Messenger (cpth) on the lunar month when the time of the annual cupping comes (springtime in its two months, April and May).

For example, when April comes we follow up the progression of the lunar month which comes in this month (April), and when the seventeenth day of the lunar month comes, it will certainly be the first day for performing Cupping. Therefore, cupping starts from the seventeenth day (inclusive) until the twenty-seventh day (inclusive).

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