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Previous Volume 346:1177-1178 April 11, 2002 Number 15

	Since this article has no abstract, we have provided an extract of the first 100 words of the full text and any section headings.

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By Tiffany Field. 181 pp., illustrated. Cambridge, Mass., MIT Press, 2001. $22.95. ISBN 0-262-06216-X.

Few physicians talk about the clinical use of touch, and few medical schools teach it specifically, even though touch is a unique tool for diagnosis and therapeutic applications, as well as a means of communicating a caring attitude. In the poem "Line Drive," by Allen Ginsberg, the physician realizes that he "forgot to touch or be touched" while giving bad news to a patient. This line reminds us that touch includes not only physical touch but also emotional and compassionate possibilities as one person's experience affects another's. But contemporary medicine, in part because of time constraints and sophisticated diagnostic interventions, . . . [Full Text of this Article]

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