p. 179 | Music and Health

The Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Battle Creek, Mich. · May 9, 1865

Music and Health.

We would have music generally taught, as it promotes health. It is one of the best remedies for weakness in the chest. It exerts a most favorable influence on delicate constitutions, by imparting vigor to the organs connected with the lungs. Consumption in its earlier stages has thus been cured. Dr. Comstock, the author, was once a consumptive and given up to die. The practice of music, joined with elocutionary exercises, was recommended by a physician. He followed the novel prescription, and reaching the secret springs of health, was restored to be useful to mankind.

PROTECTION AGAINST CERTAIN DISEASES.

The German children are proverbially healthy, and one of the causes must be sought in their musical education. All their children are taught in an art as simple as childhood itself. It was once thought that singing at a tender age injured the health by causing the spitting of blood, and led to other pulmonary complaints; but the German Government made the most rigid inquiry, and proved its falsity.

The practice expands the lungs and increases vitality; it strengthens the organs of speech, and banishes pulmonary and bronchial affections. It does still more for children. The organs are disciplined to a healthy power; nay, fortified against the assaults of fatal diseases. Bearing this shield, we need not fear a whole brigade of consumptive ghosts, nor quail in a pitched battle against that dark-visaged foe—Diptheria.

HOW THE OBJECT IS SECURED.

Art teaches us how to manage the voice for the double purpose of health and melody. The lungs should be filled without violence, if health is the object, for the lungs of consumptives are collapsed; inflation enlarges the compass, admitting more air, and with it more oxygen. Where the lungs are contracted, or the chest is weak, Dr. Fitch recommends expansion by throwing the arms backward and forward, and slowly filling the lungs in the open air. You are aware that in musical practice, the lungs are to be kept full by replenishing between the different sounds. The air-cells thus filled, I repeat, vitalizes the blood, and sends the messenger of health through the voice.

The practice of vocal and instrumental music and elocution, all have the same result. So has also exercise in the open air, which gives English ladies their robust health. American ladies wear paler faces, and are shorter lived.

I have not the least doubt that the practice of music in our common schools would add to the health and happiness of the nation.—Sel.