Music in Medicine
9781465669933
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
In the middle of the eighteenth century there were two prominent men in Paris whose conflict was typical of the controversial nature of the subject known as Musical Therapy. The Abbé Nollet was not only one of the most prominent clerics in France during his time but was in addition the most famous of its physicists. He had constructed some excellent models of machines which produced static electricity, but he had had no medical training. At about this time throughout western Europe, the subject of static electricity had become very popular. Several physicians claimed that it was of great use in the treatment of many diseases. Particularly did they say that it cured paralysis. The Abbé Nollet wrote a book about static electricity and in it told of the cases he had cured with it. The most prominent physician in Paris was Doctor Louis, who was the chief physician at the Salpêtrière Hospital, the largest and best known hospital in France. Dr. Louis tried to repeat the cures promised by Nollet but was unable to secure success in any of the patients whom he exposed to static electricity. He published the story of his failure to do so, which so excited Abbé Nollet that he wrote an entire volume condemning Dr. Louis. Instead of refuting the ability of Dr. Louis to diagnose paralysis and evaluate a cure, he climaxed his remarks with the classical question addressed to the doctor, “Is electricity your field?” For many centuries philosophers and musicians have claimed the ability to cure mental illness through the use of music, and have at times called this procedure Musical Therapy. Although the physicians might well say to these musicians that therapeutics is definitely not within the province of musicians, it is unlikely that a musician would at this time have the courage to ask physicians, “Is this your field?” A thorough search of the history of medicine will show that almost all phenomena and substances have at one time or another been tried in an attempt to combat disease. Many of these agents were abandoned when they became unfashionable to a more sophisticated civilization, or were recognized as unwholesome by a more educated generation. The fact that few were given up merely because of their ineffectiveness can be seen in the great number of quack nostrums which still enjoy an active sale among the ignorant, and by the impossible claims of highly organized cults which continue to gain in numbers and followers in this country. Healing schemes based upon the use of herbs because they are delivered right from nature’s womb, or the fanciful notion that all diseases arise from the imaginary displacements of the spinal bones, are still in their ascendency. The liberal system we call democracy has not only permitted their growth but has rewarded their ingenuous and ingenious development. Exposure of the fraudulent methods involved serves little purpose because the mentality which is so susceptible to warped reasoning responds poorly or even antagonistically to enlightening guidance.
