Huddled in his clear incubator, 11-day-old Brandan Owens seems as inaccessible as Snow White in her glass coffin. Born eight weeks premature, now weighing four pounds, Brandan must live in this artificially-warmed environment because his own underdeveloped system cannot yet regulate his body temperature.

Brandan's mother gives a nervous start as Maria Hernandez-reif of the University of Miami's Touch Research Institute(TRI) reaches through the incubator's portholes and begins to massage the baby. Her hand is larger than Brandan's entire back; as her fingers move in downward strokes, the baby's translucent skin looks as if it might tear as easily as tissue paper. She is applying gentle pressure — too light and it tickles, too strong and it hurts. As her hands move over his shriveled body, he gradually relaxes, purse his lips and extends his legs, seemingly in pleasure. By the end of the 15-minute massage, Brandan is peaceful but alert.

Far from injuring the infant, the massage may be essential to his development, for newborns are meant to be touched. In fact, if Brandan is like most of the premature babies studied at TRI, a leading scientific center devoted to exploring the effects of touch on health, he will reap benefits nothing short of astonishing. With three massages a day for ten days, he should be more alert, active and responsive than non-massaged infants of his size and condition. He may have fewer episodes of apnea, a risk factor for sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS). He should gain weight 47 percent faster. Primal need For a baby, tactile stimulation can be a matter of life and death. Michelangelo understood 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 nuzzling and caressing between mother and infant at the birth to the holding of hands between a son and a dying father that allows a final letting go, touching is our most intimate and powerful form of communication.

The effect of even the most casual touch has been seen in several studies. In one, waitresses who touch their customers on the hand or shoulder as they returned change 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. Medicine or hooey? The idea that touch can heal is an old one. The first written records of massage, the word comes from an Arabic word, meaning touch — date back 2,500 years to China. Hippocrates, the Greek physician known as the father of modern medicine, was a proselytizer for massage in the fourth century B.C. He wrote, "the physician must be acquainted with many things and assuredly with anatripsis (the medical art of rubbing)."

Science is confirming what we knew in our hearts — massage is medicine. More than 50 TRI studies, many still in progress, indicate massage may have positive effects on conditions from hyperactivity to diabetes to migraines. Massage may help asthmatics breathe easier, improve autistic children's ability to concentrate and relax burn victims about to undergo debridement, the painful procedure for removing contaminated skin. Tactile resistance Physical touch is more than skin-deep. Skin is the human body's largest organ, containing millions of receptors — about 8,000 in a single fingertip. The receptors send messages through nerve fibers to the spinal cord, then to the brain. A simple touch of a hand on a shoulder, an arm around a waist — can reduce the heart rate and lower blood pressure. Even people in deep comas may show changes in their heart rates when their hands are held. Positive, nurturing touch appears to stimulate the release of endorphins, the body's natural pain suppressors. That may explain why a mother's hug can literally "make it better" when a child skins his knee.

According to TRI research, massage boosts immune function — even in HIV-positive patients — and lowers levels of the stress hormones cortisol and norepinephrine.

Also, massaged preemies were discharged from the hospital six days sooner on average. With hundreds of thousands of premature births each year, one might think hospital nurseries would be falling all over themselves to establish massage programs. Yet they are still not widespread.

Perhaps one reason is cultural. Some countries are more tactile than others. When psychologist Sidney Jourard observed rates of casual touch among couples in cafes around the world, he reported the highest rate in Puerto Rico (180 times per hour). Field has discovered that French parents and children touch each other three times more frequently than their American counterparts. At McDonald's restaurants in Paris and Miami, Field found that French adolescents demonstrate significantly more casual touching — leaning on a friend, putting an arm around another's shoulder. American teenagers were more likely to fiddle with their rings, crack their knuckles or engage in other forms of self-stimulation. "French parents and teachers are more physically affectionate, and the kids are less aggressive," says Field. First and last Touch is the first sense to develop in humans, and it may be the last to fade. TRI set up a study in which volunteers over age 60 were given three weeks of massage and then were trained to massage toddlers at the preschool. Giving massages proved even more beneficial than getting them: the elders exhibited less depression and loneliness and lower levels of stress hormones. They had fewer doctor visits, drank less coffee and made social phone calls.

(Selected from Life, August 1997, written by George Howe Colt)