And though at first Brandan screws up his face in distaste as Hernandez-Reif’s hands move over his shriveled body, he gradually relaxes, pursues his lips thoughtfully and extends his legs, froglike, seemingly in pleasure. By the end of the 15-minute massage, Brandan is peaceful but alert, his blueberry-sized eyes moving about, taking in all they can. If he could purr in contentment, he would.

ANOREXIA: Massage improves body image in people suffering from eating disorders. As one recovering anorexic says, “I told myself, “If this person thinks my body is O.K., enough to touch me, maybe my body is O.K.’”

Brandan is reaping the benefit of investigations dating back to the 13th century, when the German emperor Frederick II, curious to know what language children would speak if they were raised without hearing any words at all, decided to conduct a little empirical research. Seizing a number of newborns from their parents, he gave them to nurses who fed the infants but were forbidden to cuddle or talk to them. The babies never learned a language. They all died before they could talk. Frederick’s linguistic experiment was a flop, yet he had unwittingly made an important discovery. Tactile stimulation can be a matter of life and death. As the historian Salimbene wrote of Frederick’s research subjects in 1248, “They could not live without petting.” Unfortunately, Fredericks’ finding has inadvertently been confirmed many times since then, most recently in Romania during the early 1990’s when thousands of infants warehoused in orphanages—some of them virtually left alone in their cribs for two years—were found to be severely impaired.

Such tragedies affirm what we instinctively know—that touch is a primal need, as necessary for growth as food, clothing or shelter. Michelangelo knew this: when he painted God extending a hand toward Adam on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, he chose touch to depict the gift of life. From the nuzzles and caresses between mother and infant that form the foundation of the self, to the holding of hands between a son and his dying father that allows a final letting go, touch is our most intimate and powerful form of communication. It can be aggressive—the finger jabbed into the chest, the slap in the face. It can be tender—the hug that comforts a crying child, the hand on the shoulder that steadies a restless teenager. The effect of even the most casual touch has been seen in numerous studies. (Waitresses who touched their customers on the hand or shoulder as they returned change, for example, received larger tips than those who didn’t.) Small wonder that politicians believe wading into crowds to “press the flesh” will pay off on election day.

The idea that touch can heal is an old one. The first written records of massage—the word comes from an Arabic word meaning stroke—date back 3,000 years to China. A bas-relief on the tomb of Ankh-mahor, a c. 2200 B.C. Egyptian priest, depicts a seated man receiving a vigorous foot rub. Hippocrates, the Greek physician known as the father of modern medicine, was a 4th century B.C. proselytizer for massage. “The physician must be experienced in many things, but most assuredly in rubbing.” he wrote. In the Middle Ages, the Church saw manipulation of the body as the work of the devil; many protomasseuses may have been burned at the stake as witches. In the 20th century also, massage has often been assumed to be a front—not for the devil but for prostitution.

Massage has regained respectability in recent years and now enjoys unprecedented popularity. Some 25 million Americans make 60 million visits to 85,000 practitioners each year. Those numbers don’t include employees of the growing number of institutions—including the U.S. Department of Justice—that offer massage in the workplace. Or the children of the 10,000 parents who learn baby massage each year. Massage is being used to boost athletic performance, reduce agitation in Alzheimer’s patients and relieve stress at disaster sites. After the Oklahoma City bombing, volunteer therapists gave massage to exhausted rescue workers, numbed survivors and overworked pathologists. The state medical examiner observed that the massage therapists were accomplishing more in 15 minutes than psychologists could in an hour or two.