Quick, what’s the largest organ in the body? Congratulations if you’re one of the few who got it right: our skin. And the organ’s size reflects its position amid the hierarchy of senses: our sense of touch is almost certainly our most important.
Think about it. With no sense of touch, we couldn’t walk, talk or even eat.
But our sense of touch is unusual in another way. Unlike smell, taste, hearing and sight, the sense of touch must be reciprocated. Without human contact, especially in the early stages of life, the consequences can be dire – as was tragically demonstrated in the 1940s by Austrian-American child psychiatrist René Spitz.
At that time, the theory of disease being spread by contact was still quite novel. Spitz gathered a group of babies from orphanages and from mothers in prison to see whether reduced human contact could lessen the incidence of disease. The babies were fed and clothed and kept warm and clean, but were not played with, handled, or held. Spitz thought human contact would risk exposing the children to hazardous infectious organisms. But what happened was that while the children’s physical needs were met, they became withdrawn and sickly, and lost weight. A great many died, and in tragic irony, exhibited a vast number of infections. In one institution where the experiment was being conducted, the mortality rate from measles was 40% compared to the national average of 0.5%. In the cleanest and most sterile institutions, the overall death rate was above 75%. (reported in Doug’s Diary – dougduncan.info)
Spitz had rediscovered that a lack of human contact and interaction is fatal to infants. We need touch, just as we need love.
In another example, premature newborns studied by researchers Klaus and Kennell who were carried, rocked and cuddled during their stay in a hospital nursery gained more weight, had fewer periods of non-breathing and better-functioning nervous systems than newborns who did not receive this level of attention. (Ashley Montagu – The Human Significance of the Skin)
For adults, our deep (and often unconscious) need for touch becomes more poignant with the loss of a loved one, as our body aches to be held, touched and loved.
Keep in touch
Our most important sense deserves more respect – and attention
By Vivienne O’Keeffe