This line in Andrew Lloyd Weber’s song, "Memories," sums up the joy that massage therapy can bring, not only to the client but also to the therapist.

This joy of massage can be evidenced throughout this issue, from New Englander Bernie Siegel’s column (page 168) to Mort Malkin’s article on Bob Waddington who built a successful suburban Boston practice (page 96) to MTJ newcomers and Californians Kylea Taylor and Katherine Zeigler’s article examining the personal vulnerabilities stirred by the therapist-client relationship (page 64).

While each of us have experienced joy and happiness in their many emotional qualities, they are difficult to quantify. But we know that they work and that they help heal. Saturday Review editor Norman Cousins documented that jokes and laughter were the best treatment when he was afflicted in the 1970s with the arthritic disorder of the spine known as ankylosing spondylitis, which his doctors told him was incurable. This is recorded in his best-seller, Anatomy of an Illness, As Perceived by the Patient.**

Laughter is just one example of effective remedies not mass-produced by chemistry or engineering whose beneficial effects have not been objectively quantified. Even in its own realm, what is called traditional or allopathic medicine has forgotten its pharmaceutical roots (no pun intended). Much of this was pointed out in February to the U.S. House of Representatives, Committee on Government Reform by Thomas V. Holohan, M.D., chief of patient care services for the Veterans Health Administration. "Many practices often considered alternative medicine have been, or are, also used in ‘conventional medicine’," he said. "Many drugs widely used by conventional practitioners are, in fact, botanical preparations."

Dr. Holohan’s remarks are reminiscent of the U.S. Department of Commerce’s 1978 thick report (PB 286 929) on "Assessing the Efficacy and Safety of Medical Technologies." It contains the rather remarkable statement that "Only 10-to-20 percent of all procedures used in present medical practice have been shown to be of benefit by controlled clinical trials; many of the other procedures may not be efficacious."

The import of that statement is that the medical community makes demands of massage therapy that it cannot itself fulfill: produce objective data that show that all of its modalities have beneficial effects.

Yet, massage therapists and their clients know massage’s benefits very well, because they have seen it and experienced it. They know that massage, in its various modalities, works. It relieves discomfort and pain. It relaxes and frees the body of the consequences of stress-filled life. It promotes health by stimulating immune and other helpful bodily processes. It brings joy and happiness to both client and therapist.

Theodore Berland, Editor

Both those who touch and have been touched know what happiness is.

* Sung by the character Grizabel in Weber’s musical, Cats, ,1981, Very Useful Music Co.

** New York: Norton, 1979.

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