Remember when your mother kissed your knee when you fell and it actually made it feel better? Was that a wives tale, a simple psychosomatic effect, or is there a material explanation for this phenomenon? Researchers say yes: 

”Basically the signals that tell the brain that we are being stroked on the skin have their own direct route to the brain, and are not blocked even if the brain is receiving pain impulses from the same area. In fact it’s more the opposite, that the stroking impulses are able to deaden the pain impulses,” says Line Löken, postgraduate student in neurophysiology at the Sahlgrenska Academy.

(Source)