A Touch of Sensitivity
How do you feel about touching? Our skin is a sensitive matter; it contains five million touch cells, but what are they for and how important are they to us?
Recent experiments show that touch deprivation can lead to abnormal and violent behaviour; also to brain damage, heart disease and lack of resistance to infection.
Touch therapy is proving useful with disturbed adolescents and in marriage guidance. But more surprising is evidence that premature babies do better lying on lambs-wool than on cotton sheets and that heart patients do better if they keep pets.
From bizarre experiments in phone booths and libraries comes further evidence of the power of touch. Can we afford to ignore its importance in our everyday lives? Narrator VERNON JOYNER
Film editor BOB HARVEY
Editor SIMON CAMPBELL-JONES
Written and produced by STEPHEN ROSI