Nearchus, who accompanied Alexander the Great in his conquests, reported that in India the only remedy against the bite of a serpent was a chant[70]. Galen, one of the soundest physicians of ancient Rome, recommended music as an antidote to the bite of vipers and scorpions[7], and for centuries music was recommended for the bite of a tarantula. In the seventeenth century three physicians named Mead, Burette and Baglivi explained this use of music. They said that it threw the patient into a violent fit of dancing which brought out a plentiful perspiration, and with it the poison. Since perspiration consists of water and a few simple salts, such activity would increase the concentration of the poison in the circulating blood, and neither the explanation nor the treatment is acceptable[28]. Music was recommended not only for the bites of the reptiles and insects; Desault recommended it in the treatment of hydrophobia[23]. Not all bites are poisonous, and it is likely that in the case of the two patients mentioned the cure was more for fright than bite.
The effects of music on the mind were too obvious to escape the ancients. When the armies of Greece took the field, they were accompanied by the best musicians, who by their martial strains inspired the soldiers with a kind of mechanical courage never experienced by their enemies.
The distinction between mental health and disease was not advanced among the ancients, but they did recognize varieties of insanity such as delirium, melancholy and mania. Many physicians recommended music in the treatment of mental disease, and Quarin spoke of a single case of epilepsy cured by music. With the exception of severe epilepsy, many patients who suffer from the symptoms which bear this name have only occasional attacks and these disappear spontaneously, making the music simply another coincidence.
Celsus, who was a great medical authority not only in his own time but in subsequent centuries wrote of the mentally ill, “We must quiet their demoniacal laughter ... and sooth their sadness by harmony, the sound of cymbals and other noisy instruments”[16]. Areteus, another great physician of ancient Rome, prescribed music for “corybantism, a disease of the imagination”[24]. The great Dutch physician, Boerhaave[11], said, “I do not know if all that one tells us of the charms and enchantments could not be attributed to the effects of music, in which the ancient physicians were well versed.” References continued to appear concerning the magical relationship between music and healing. Robert Grosseteste (1175-1253 A.D.) said that disease and even wounds and deafness could be cured by music based upon a knowledge of astrology and mathematics[75].
During the early part of the Christian Era, most of the arts were sustained by the Church, and as a result the finest works in painting and music were available to the average man only within places of worship. Not until the Renaissance did serious music take on a secular character. Music until then was largely identified with religion, and as such was considered to have an influence on the soul. Bacon advanced as a rule of health that people “recreate their spirits every day with a piece of good music.”[13] He went a step further in his Sylva Sylvarum.
“Seeing then the mind is so powerful an agent in particular disease, I see no reason why the efficacy of music should not be tried in many disorders which arise in the animal constitution; for music composes the irregular motion of the animal spirits and more especially allays the inordinate passion of grief and sorrow.”[7]
The restful and joyful qualities of music were praised by Shakespeare:
“But sweet music can minister to minds diseased
Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow
Raze out the written troubles of the brain
And with its sweet oblivious antidote
Cleanses the full bosom of all perilous stuff
Which weighs upon the heart.”