The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch

Contents
Acknowledgments
The Inside Story
1. A Place by the Fire
	The Common Touch
	A Place by the Fire
	The Walled City
	Hard at Work
	The Rites of Pleasure
2. A Touchable God
	A Tactile Cosmology
	Mystical Touch
	Gestures of Piety
	The Cult of Relics
	Corpus Christi
	Ordeals by Fire
3. Painful Times
	Suffering Bodies and Healing Hands
	Blind Touch
	Leprosy, the Black Death, and Dancing Mania
	The Uses of Pain
	The Torments of Hell
	Sorrow and Compassion
4. A Woman’s Touch
	Male and Female Bodies
	A Woman’s Touch
	Women’s Work
	Texts and Textiles
	Mystical Raptures and Pain Craft
	The Witch’s Touch
5. Animal Skins
	Animal Bodies
	Animal Companions
	Beasts, Wild Men, and Slaves
	Animal Souls
	Experimentation and the  Campaign Against Cruelty
6. Tactile Arts
	The Aesthetics of Touch
	The Feel of Art
	Crafty Ladies
	Touch in the Museum
7. The Modern Touch
	Petrarch’s Vision
	The Decline of Sacred Touch
	New Sensory Worlds
	The Persistence of Touch
	The Finishing Touch
8. Sensations of a New Age
	The Drill
	The School, the Prison, and the Museum
	The Feel of the City
	The Electric Creed
	Touch at Home
	The Stuff of Dreams
Bibliography
Index