Abstract: Analysis of relevant literature shows that cognition and practical activities on “body, exercise and health” have a long history in the West before the 18^th history. Over the millennium before the 18th century, people’s concept of health was dominated by theories of medicine and philosophy in ancient Greece and ancient Rome. After the establishment of Christianity in the 1st century, people’s concept of health was also influenced by “religion, witchcraft and theories on external environment”. After the Renaissance, the emergence of new theories and knowledge liberated people from ignorance, and people’s health activities transformed from “body fluid discharge”, and “bloodletting” to “physical exercise”, and people started to stress the form and efficiency of exercise. Generally, the changes in the Western concept of health before the 18^th century was a transition from ignorance to science, from inevitability to freedom, from “adjustment within the body” to “external body workout”. In the transition, the theme of self-care and body care never changed.

Key words: Before the 18^th Century, West, “Body, Exercise and Health”, Philology