MUSIC IN OUR HOMES

Seventh-day Adventist Missionary Society · Oakland, California · Aug 4, 1881

MUSIC IN OUR HOMES.

DR. OSCAR JENNINGS, a noted physician of Paris, writes a discriminating letter to the London Lancet on music as a remedy for disease, and among other things, says; "Whatever may be its mechanism, there is no doubt that music does exert a powerful physical action. Pythagoras held that music might be made serviceable in the treatment of various diseases, and so have many generations of physicians down to our own time. 'Music,' says Esquirol, 'acts upon the physique by determining nervous vibrations, and by exciting the circulation. . . . It acts upon the morale by fixing the attention upon sweet impressions, and by calling up agreeable recollections.' 'In the treatment of mental disease,' says the same author, 'I have constantly used music. It calms and soothes the mind, although it does not cure; it is, however, a precious agent, and ought not to be neglected.' Pinel, who was no mean authority, also gives ample proof of its value in his treatise on Mental Alienation. At the present day, concerts are a standard element of treatment in many lunatic asylums, but, as generally conducted, they may be considered to form a part of the general hygienic and moral treatment, and to differ entirely from the therapeutic selection of various kinds of melody, according to the condition of the patient. The use of music as a remedy may be truly said to date from the very origin of medicine. In one of his odes, Pindar relates that Æsculapius himself so treated some of his patients."—Sel.