Touching is often a forgotten part of medicine. The manual medicine or therapeutic touch (TT) is much more powerful than many modern, biomedically oriented physicians think. Pain and discomfort can be alleviated just by touching the sick area and in this way help the patient to be in better contact with the tissue and organs of their body. Lack of presence in the body seems to be connected with...

In the fall of 2007, 2 years shy of her 100th birthday, Nobel laureate and National Academy of Sciences member Rita Levi-Montalcini yearned to start a new research project. Her idea stemmed from studies she had carried out more than half a century earlier, through which she unveiled and characterized the function of NGF. Time had taken its toll on her sight and hearing, but her keen observation...