The following curious case is recorded by Paret:—“Une jeune fille d’environ 11 ans, fort prématurée relativement aux facultés, ayant le genre nerveux très sensible et très irritable, fut attaquée, il y a environ deux ans, de douleurs violentes dans tout le corps, avec insomnie, tension excessive et fort douleureuse des muscles de l’abdomen, accompagnée de fièvre. Deux ans après, des convulsions se déclarèrent, avec une violence qui surpassa tout ce que je craignais; les bonds, les élans, furent, pendant quatre or cinq jours et autant de nuits, si forts, qu’il fallait deux hommes pour retenir dans le lit la jeune personne, d’ailleurs faible et délicate. Enfin, je proposai d’employer la musique. On fit, en conséquence, entrer deux ménestriers, disposés à donner leur premier coup d’archet; à l’instant de leur apparition les convulsions cessèrent d’abord et-reparurent peu de tems après: on changea d’air, et les convulsions cessèrent encore pour reparaître, aussi au troisième air, qui sans doute se trouva plus au goût de la malade, elle demanda un violon, qu’on lui donna, et quoiqu’elle n’eût jamais fait d’autre essai, son œil fixé sur les joueurs, son attention fut si grande, et ses mouvemens si rapides, qu’elle suivait ceux des ménétriers sans causer aucune discordance. Des connaisseurs ne pouvaient s’empêcher de convenir de la justesse et de la précision qu’elle observait. Son oreille était même si délicate, qu’elle faisait des reproches aux ménétriers, qui, obligés de jouer une grande partie de la nuit, se trouvaient eux-mêmes dans le cas de manquer de mésure.
La petite malade continua de jouer pendant plus de 30 heures de suite, sans autre interruption que celle qu’il fallait pour prendre ses bouillons, et dans ce court intervalle on voyait les contractions des tendons se renouveller, quoique moins fortes. Les musiciens fatigués, elle se contenta de la voix, qu’elle accompagna de son instrument. Au bout de ce terme, un sommeil de six ou sept heures, qui vint très naturellement, produisit une augmentation de calme. Au réveil, on varia les exercices, et ainsi se termina la scène qui avait duré 48 heures, après laquelle les convulsions cessèrent totalement. Trois jours après, la malade se trouva parfaitement bien; et ne restait que des convulsions très faibles, et la maladie se termina après trois mois de durée.”
A still more singular effect of music is related by Roger in the case of a poor wretch broken upon the wheel. In his agonies he blasphemed in the most fearful manner, and cordially damned the spiritual comforter who sought to reconcile him to his sufferings. Some itinerant musicians chanced to pass by, they were stopped by the priest and requested to play to the patient, when to the surprise of all around, he seemed relieved, and became so tranquil, that he attended with calm resignation to their exhortations, confessed his manifold offences, and died like a good Christian.
Rousseau, who entertained a sovereign contempt for French music, observes, that the Cantates of Bernier cured the fever of a French musician, while they most probably would have given a fever to a musician of any other country.
This remark of Rousseau reminds me of the French philosophical traveller (I believe it was Diderot), who on his journey to London from Dover, while horses were changing, had the curiosity to see a sick ostler with a raging fever attended by a country practitioner, who, despairing most probably of his patient, said, that he might be allowed to eat any thing he wished for. The man asked for a red-herring, which was forthwith given to him. Our tourist, generalizing like most of his brethren, immediately noted in his diary—English Physicians allow red-herrings to fever patients.
Some months after he changed horses at the same inn, and asked how long the unfortunate creature had survived his herring, when, to his utter surprise, he was informed that the hale, hearty fellow who was bringing out the relays, was the very man. He of course pulled out his journal and entered—red-herrings cure the fever of Englishmen.
Our traveller crossed over, and having accidentally seen in a French inn a poor devil whose case appeared to him similar to the sturdy ostler, he ventured to prescribe a similar remedy, which the patient only survived an hour or two; when his death was announced, he philosophically shrugged up his shoulders, and wrote in his book—Though red-herrings cure fevers in England, they most decidedly kill in France.
Mad musicians seem to be more mad than others; for Fodéré gives us the following strange account of some of them. “Les plus grands musiciens ne reconnaissent souvent plus leurs instruments: l’un prenant son violon, que je lui avais mis dans les mains, pour un vase de nuit, et un autre prenant sa flûte pour un sabre, et voulait m’en frapper.”
We, however, frequently meet with lunatics who, although they have no remembrance of the past circumstances of their life, recollect and perform airs which they had formerly played.
Various well-authenticated cases lead us to suppose, that a sensibility to music long latent may be called into action by accidental circumstances. A case is on record of a countrywoman, twenty-eight years of age, who had never left her village, but was, by mere chance, present at a fête where a concert was performed, and dancing to a full band afterwards followed. She was delighted with the novelty of the scene; but, the fête concluded, she could not dismiss from her mind the impression the music had produced. Whether she was at her meals, her devotions, her daily occupation, or in her bed,—still, or moving about,—the airs she had heard, and in the succession in which they had been performed, were ever present to her recollection. To sleep she became a stranger,—every function became gradually deranged, and six short months terminated her existence, not having for one moment lost this strange sensation; and during this sad period, when any false note on the violin was purposely drawn, she would hold her head with both hands, and exclaim, “Oh! what a horrible note! it tears my brain!”