Those nuns who taught you in elementary school are now teaching science a thing or two about alternative medicine.

Check out this item, from the front page of today’s Wall Street Journal:

Here at the Providence Rest nursing home, which caters mostly to retired nuns and devout Roman Catholics, Harold Packman has developed an important expertise: Giving massages to women who may have spent a lifetime shying away from this kind of physical contact.

Women like Sister Mary Austin Cantwell. Recently, Sister Cantwell, 67 years old and wearing some traditional vestments, rolled in on her motorized scooter for an appointment. Mr. Packman gingerly lifted the hem of the nun’s black skirt and started rubbing her arthritic knee.

“Oh, this is heaven,” Sister Cantwell exclaimed as he applied cream to her afflicted joint. “I am in heaven.”

Sister Cantwell is a bit of an exception: She lets Mr. Packman make contact directly with her knee without any intervening garment. Many other patients are more vigilant, arriving in long dresses, support hose, and bulky long-sleeved sweaters that are not to be disturbed.

Providence Rest hired Mr. Packman, a licensed massage therapist, as part of an unusual experiment to cut its use of antipsychotic drugs. These controversial drugs — which are often used as “chemical restraints” to sedate agitated patients — have set off a national debate over whether nursing homes are misusing them. Newer versions, known as “atypical” antipsychotics, can increase the risk of death in elderly people with Alzheimer’s disease, the Food and Drug Administration has warned.

Providence Rest’s alternative treatments sound like something from a pricey spa, not a nursing home in the Bronx. Instead of antipsychotics, it has developed regimens involving aromatherapy, long, soothing bubble baths, use of medicines thought to have fewer, less severe side-effects — and Mr. Packman’s rubdowns.

The results are startling. Nationwide, some 30% of nursing-home patients are put on antipsychotics, according to federal data, but Providence Rest has cut its own use down to 2% or 3%. That’s the lowest rate of any nursing home in New York, and among the lowest in the country, according to the New York Association of Homes & Services for the Aging.

“Harold is a very big factor” in that success, says Jocelyn Ronquillo, Providence Rest’s medical director and leader of its anti-antipsychotics drive. When she arrived at the home, usage of antipsychotic drugs was at about 21%, Dr. Ronquillo says.

Mr. Packman’s strongest weapon in persuading clients to acquiesce to his touch may be the fact that he’s as old as — or older than — most of the women he treats. “There are advantages to looking like I do,” says Mr. Packman, who is 85, although with his sprightly gait and shock of white hair doesn’t look a day over 80.

“Patients say, ‘You have no idea how much pain I have,’ and I say, ‘Oh yes I do.'”

Check the link for more, and for a nifty video of Mr. Packman at work.