FOOTNOTES:
[114] The author of a book, entitled "Talismans justifiés" pronounces a talisman to be the seal, figure, character, or image of a heavenly sign, constellation or planet, engraven on a sympathetic stone, or on a metal corresponding to the star, etc. in order to receive its influences.
[115] Acts of the Apostles, chap. xxviii. v. 3.
CHAPTER XIV.
ON THE MEDICINAL POWERS ATTRIBUTED TO MUSIC BY THE ANCIENTS.
The power of music over the human mind, as well as its influence on the animal creation, has been variously attested; and its curative virtues have been no less extolled by the ancients.[116] Martianus Capella assures us, that fevers were removed by songs, and that Asclepiades cured deafness by the sound of the trumpet. Wonderful indeed! that the same noise which would occasion deafness in some, should be a specific for it in others! It is making the viper cure its own bite. But, perhaps Asclepiades was the inventor of the acousticon, or ear-trumpet, which has been thought a modern discovery; or of the speaking-trumpet, which is a kind of cure for distant deafness. These would be admirable proofs of musical power![117] We have the testimony of Plutarch, and several other ancient writers, that Thaletas the Cretan, delivered the Lacedemonians from the pestilence by the sweetness of his lyre.
Xenocrates, as Martianus Capella further informs us, employed the sound of instruments in the cure of maniacs; and Apollonius Dyscolus, in his fabulous history (Historia Commentitia) tells us, from Theophrastus's Treatise upon Enthusiasm, that music is a sovereign remedy for a dejection of spirits, and disordered mind; and that the sound of the flute will cure epilepsy and the sciatic gout. Athenaeus quotes the same passage from Theophrastus, with this additional circumstance, that, as to the second of these disorders, to render the cure more certain, the flute should play in the Phrygian mode. But Aulus Gellius, who mentions this remedy, seems to administer it in a very different manner, by prescribing to the flute-player a soft and gentle strain, si modulis lenibus says he, tibicen incinet: for the Phrygian mode was remarkably vehement and furious.
This is what Coelius Aurelianus calls loca dolentia decantare, enchanting the disordered places. He even tells us how the enchantment is brought about upon these occasions, in saying that the pain is relieved by causing a vibration of the fibres of the afflicted part. Galen speaks seriously of playing the flute on the suffering part, upon the principle, we suppose, of a medicated vapour bath.
The sound of the flute was likewise a specific for the bite of a viper, according to Theophrastus and Democritus, whose authority Aulus Gellius gives for his belief of the fact. But there is nothing more extraordinary among the virtues attributed to music by the ancients, than what Aristotle relates in its supposed power of softening the rigour of punishment. The Tyrhenians, says he, never scourge their slaves, but by the sound of flutes, looking upon it as an instance of humanity to give some counterpoise to pain, and thinking by such a diversion to lessen the sum total of the punishment. To this account may be added a passage from Jul. Pallus, by which we learn, that in the triremes, or vessels with three banks of oars, there was always a tibicen, or flute-player, not only to mark the time, or cadence for each stroke of the oar, but to sooth and cheer the rowers by the sweetness of the melody. And from this custom Quintilian took occasion to say, that music is the gift of nature, to enable us the more patiently to support toil and labour.[118]
These are the principal passages which antiquity furnishes, relative to the medicinal effects of music; in considering which, reliance is placed on the judgment of M. Burette, whose opinions will come with the more weight, as he had not only long made the music of the ancients his particular study, but was a physician by profession. This writer, in a dissertation on the subject, has examined and discussed many of the stories above related, concerning the effects of music in the cure of diseases. He allows it to be possible, and even probable, that music, by reiterated strokes and vibrations given to the nerves, fibres, and animal spirits, may be of use in the cure of certain diseases; yet he by no means supposes that the music of the ancients possessed this power in a greater degree than the modern music, but rather that a very coarse and vulgar music is as likely to operate effectually on such occasions as the most refined and perfect. The savages of America pretend to perform these cures by the music and jargon of their imperfect instruments; and in Apulia, where the bite of the tarantula is pretended to be cured by music, which excites a desire to dance, it is by an ordinary tune, very coarsely performed.[119]