Tip The Skin as a Social Organ - blog series

[Diane]

I was inspired today by coming across this paper, The Skin as a Social Organ, from a few years ago. I wrote a bit about it in this thread. I think, in fact, it must have inspired the SharedSpace thread in the first place.

Anyway, I'm about to start another big longwinded blog series on it. Here is the first post.

[Keith]

The link to your "first post" takes me to the article download instead of your blog...of course, I just clicked within your signature instead.

Thanks again for doing what you do, and sharing it with us.

Respectfully,
Keith

[Diane]

Oops. Corrected.
Thanks for pointing that out.

[Diane]

HumanAntigravitySuit: Preamble, random thoughts on spas.

[Jo Bowyer]

The spa tradition reached it's zenith in the 19th century,when surgery was primitive and many drugs were poisonous. Spa treatment is still in demand in some European countries such as Germany and Hungary. It has all but died out in the UK.

I worked as a treatment room assistant in a UK Spa in the '70s while I was waiting to start my first hospital job. It was reasonably priced and because there was a fasting regime many of the clients were there to lose weight.

I saw patients with Rheumatoid disease using wheelchairs during their first few days who were able to leave walking unaided and a 17 year old with inoperable Ca Liver,who experienced relief of pain and nausea to the extent that he was able to start eating solids and go for walks in the grounds.

However it was a business.

Most patients were fasting for weight loss and 'treatments' were used as a means of keeping them occupied. Some had themselves driven to fish and chip shops or the local cream tea emporium and on more than one occasion,someone was carted off in an ambulance with suspected intestinal obstruction.

On my second day a fight broke out in the light diet section of the dining room because someone was thought to have stolen a grape from his neighbour.

I was put in charge of THE ULTRASOUND MACHINE (a method of treatment so important that it had it's own little temple)with instructions to deliver unsafe dosages prescribed by the 'Consultants' (osteopaths). I tested the treatment heads before starting and found no output. The engineer confimed broken crystals. Someone else was given the job of accolyte to the ultrasound machine,because I refused to comply with the prescriptions of the osteopaths.

After a few days delivering hot packs,sitz baths and Scottish douche,during which I was well supervised,one of the masseuses developed RSI and I was sent off to the massage rooms.

The massage rooms were staffed by a burned out body builder,a medical student,several student osteopaths and me. The body builder tried to keep some sort of order and decorum in the thinly curtained treatment room,the rest of us were in our early 20's,usually hungover sometimes drunk,always unwashed and unreasonably disrespectful,because the patients were rich and we were monkeys paid peanuts.

The student osteopaths tried out every thrust they could think of, I was playing with ideomotion, we all screamed with laughter whenever a patient farted,the rest of the time we sang 'brown girl in the ring' loudly and continuously.

If there were any complaints,we never got to hear about it and quite often we were given tips.

I hear that student behaviour has improved a great deal since I was young, but my advice to patients contemplating Spa treatment,especially the one I worked in,which is now long closed,has always been caveat emptor

[Diane]

OMG that is hilarious Jo.
Sounds like the circus just moved to the outpatient clinic.

[Diane]

HumanAntiGravitySuit: Skin as Social Organ: Part 1: Dual Nature of Touch: As PTs do we "get" this?

[Diane]

HumanAntiGravitySuit: Skin as a Social Organ: Part 1a: Touch can be pleasant, rilling.

[Diane]

HumanAntiGravitySuit, Part 1b: Vallbo on C-tactile fibres

[Diane]

HumanAntiGravitySuit: Part 2a: Different kinds of touch

[Diane]

Part 2b: Proxemics

[Jo Bowyer]

Definately Word Of The Day

[Rick Carter]

Many a weak, asthenic youngster with a history of constant fatigue, frequent illness, lack of appetite and underweight, can be put on his feet by methodical physical exercise, sport, fresh air, sunshine, massage, prolonged periods of outdoor life (camping), calisthenics and other appropriate means of physiotherapy. What all these measures have in common is the invigorating effect on the skin and on the flabby muscles. The skin is biologically related to the nervous system. Among the lowest species in the animal kingdom where no complex organ-differentiation exists, skin and nervous system are one. In the higher developed species, including man, extensive differentiation has taken place which has led to the formation of organs and organ systems. The skin has still preserved a good deal of its primordial nervous functions, as anyone knows who has felt "shivers running up and down his spine," "tingling" or "goose flesh" from sudden fright. In many persons stroking of the skin produces a sensation of pleasure and contentment. The beneficial effect of massage is partly due to its soothing action on the skin and nerves.

Man Made Plague Chapter 7-Avoidance of Neurosis William G. Niederland, MD 1948

[Diane]

HumanAntiGravitySuit, Part 2c: the sad dearth of manual therapy aspects in reviews of interpersonal touch.

[Diane]

HumanAntiGravitySuit, Part 2d: Learning to sit still, learning to behave, learning to not be connected to oneself