Many and sundry are the means, says Robert Burton, which philosophers and physicians have prescribed to exhilarate a sorrowful heart, to divert those fixed and intent cares and meditations, which in this malady so much offend; but in my judgment, none so present, none so powerful, none so apposite as mirth, music and merry company.[193:1]
During recent years the influence of music in disease has been the subject of renewed attention. In London Canon Harford, an enthusiastic believer in the efficacy of this method of treatment, organized bands of musicians, under the auspices of the Order of Saint Cecilia, who visited certain hospitals, where permission had been given, and there exercised their art with results highly encouraging and beneficial.
And in Boston Dr. John Dixwell has for many years been active in providing music for hospital patients. His admirable enterprise has been successful, and has received the endorsement of the medical fraternity. A wise discrimination is essential in the selection of music especially adapted to benefit any particular class of cases.
The National Society of Musical Therapeutics was founded in the city of New York, by Miss Eva Augusta Vescelius, in the year 1903, with the object of encouraging the study of music in relation to life and health; and also for the promotion of its use as a curative agent in hospitals, asylums, and prisons. The therapeutic use of music is believed to have passed the experimental stage. It is now admitted, says Miss Vescelius, that music can be so employed as to exercise a distinct psychological influence upon the mind, nerve-centres and circulatory system; and may serve as an efficient remedy for many ills to which the flesh is said to be heir. The selection of music in hospitals and asylums needs thoughtful consideration, for there we meet with all kinds of discord. An emotional song, for example, which would give pleasure to one, might sadden another, and a patient suffering from nostalgia would not be benefited by a melody suggesting a home-picture.
Will the trained nurse of the future have to include voice culture in her training before she is declared competent to minister to the wants of the sick?
This question is raised by Dr. George M. Stratton, professor of experimental psychology in Johns Hopkins University. In an address on "The Nature and Training of the Emotions," delivered before more than a hundred nurses of the hospitals of Baltimore, he made the broad statement that music would be a vital factor in treating the sick in the future.
Dr. Stratton did not insist that every nurse of the future must be a Patti, a Melba, or a Nordica; but he held that in the future a young woman who devotes her life to nursing the sick should be able to sing to the patient under her care.[194:1]
The mental effect of music is generally recognized as beneficial, in that it lifts the entire being into a higher state. That this effect is communicated to the body, is admitted, but the extent of physical benefit has not been sufficiently investigated either by musicians or by scientists. In the application of music for the treatment of disease, it should be remembered that the seat of many disorders is primarily in the mind, and that therefore the mental condition must be radically changed before a cure is possible. "In listening to music, the mind absorbs those tones which have become silenced in itself, and in the body as a necessary consequence; just as the stomach assimilates those food-elements which are required to repair the waste of the system. Thus our music-food is selected and distributed where it is most needed, and this natural selection of musical vibrations acts specifically upon those parts of the body which are out of harmony. A concert programme is a menu for the multitude. We hear all the music printed on it, but digest very little of it. Some kinds of music thus heard, must inevitably be wasted on the listener, or cause a musical dyspepsia."[195:1]
The English clergyman and writer, Hugh Reginald Haweis, extols music as a healthy outlet for emotion, and as especially adapted for young ladies. Joy flows naturally into ringing harmonies, says he, while music has the subtle power to soften melancholy, by presenting it with its fine emotional counterpart.
A good play on the piano has not unfrequently taken the place of a good cry upstairs, and a cloud of ill-temper has often been dispersed by a timely practice. One of Schubert's friends used to say that, although very cross before sitting down to his piano, a long scramble-duet through a symphony or through one of his own delicious and erratic pianoforte duets, always restored him to good humor.[196:1]
