MUSIC AS MEDICINE.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19762, 13 April 1926, Page 10

MUSIC AS MEDICINE.

VIEWS OF A DOCTOR. Nineteen years ago I wrote, in & book on bet Ith, a chapter on the uses of music, partlv based upon my recollections of the evident stimulation and refreshment which the patients of the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh used to derive from ward concerts (writes Dr C. W. Saleeby, in the Outlook). My point of view was that of the doctor and singer. But one time I myself was knocked down by a motor car and underwent some breakages. Lying on one’s back, one sees the matter from another point of view, and I wish to make my own experience useful for others who must lie so? Already I had drawn attention to the value of “wireless” for invalids, little guessing that I was about to learn the facts of the matter in the most effective possible way. For many weeks the wireless was a priceless boon to me —even more valuable than the small artificial sun which played on my leg, knee, and hand, and that is saying a good deal. It served Efte by day and by night. Always the best of sleepers hitherto, not dreaming once in a twelvemonth, I feared the nights after days of inaction indoors, but the wireless kept me company until 11, and even midnight on Saturdays. I do not know how I could have endured that experience without such, a boon. If that was the service to a patient who expected to be perfectly well in due course, what of those who are bedridden for months or years, perhaps without hope of recovery? And what of those whose psychical condition will sway the balance either towards life or death? There can be but one answer. Again, what of the anodyne action of music and the rest that the ether carries to us if we have the means to receive it? My surgeon carefully defined my local feelings as "gross discomfort” rather than pain, and he was right. Acute pain, such as the dental surgeon must inflict if ho tries to remove a nerve which is not deadened, is one thing, gross discomfort is another. For acute pain we may have recourse to drugs, at a cost. Listening to music, what need had I for drugs; what need had I to notice "gross discomfort?” On inquiry 1 learned that there exists entirely tmauvertised a children’s wireless hospital fund which provides the most exquisite and blessed medicine for sick children. 1 had to worm out the facts, for the British Broadcasting Company feels some reluctance in asking for subscriptions to something which it alone can supply. Seven children’s hospitals in oi near London have been supplied, beginning with the most famous in the Empire, the Sick Children’s Hospital in Great Ormond street. The service in all consists of loud speakers lor convalescent wards. •It should he possible to show statistically that such provision effects even monetary saving by shortening convalescence, and allows beds to be emptied and filled more frequently. , ISveiy cot and bed in every hospital and nursing home should be equipped with a pair of head phones, for the use of the individual patient as and when required. The divine arts of music and musical speech are er-er more divine than when they soothe and cheer and heal the broken, the weary, the frightened, and the sleepless. Wireless can bring them to the neediest cars. Let those of us whom the wireless delights and selves at so little cost think of long, miserable hours endured by hundreds of thousands of invalids, mostly poor, to whom we owe some practical charity by way oi thanks for our own lives and retained or recovered health. All good new things are old. There is nothing new under the sun. And yet even poor Jeremiah, in his lamentations, said that the Lord’s merries are new every morning. To-morrow morning’s sunlight will be re.v, but the sun has been shining a long time. On many occasions I have reminded leaders that the use of sunlight to cure disease is as old as Hippocrates, who practised 400 years before Christ. The use of music to cure disease is older than that. It is at least as old as the lovely story of young David and (he heavy-hearted King Saul, possessed with an evil spirit of remorse and fear "David took the harp, and clayed with his hand; so Saul was. refreshed and was well, and the evil spirit departed from him.” Much good music, filling life and joy, has mankind owed to tne Jews from that date until our own. As for the Greeks, the other great race of antiquity, we all knew their story of Orpheus. No doubt the ancients, both Jews and Greeks, especially thought of music as having a magical powei against evil spirits. In one of the loveliest of all operas—it should be lovely, for Us theme is the power cf music, even against death—there is a scene where Orpheus descends to the lower world to find his lost love Eurvnice. But first he must pass the portals guarded by hostile, bitter, cruel beings of devilish temper. What an opportunity tor the composer! And old Gluck took it. Into the month and the harp of Orpheus he put music so divinely beautiful that we are not surprised when the devilish spirits are humanised, made kindly and angelic, so that they give welcome and aid to the singer in his search for his beloved. \Ve change the words nowadays, and instead of talking about evil spirits or devils we say obsessions or complexes, but these really are evil spirits, inhabiting our souls, or obstructing our path to those we love; and they need exercising by the divinely healing art of David and Orpheus now as ever. Fear is a devil, and many of the sick are poasesicrl by it. anci cannot sleep for it; the hag sits upon iheir wide.,;, open eyes. Music has nature.! magic against her, many’s the lime.