The curative power of music is little understood. Our medical men would do
well to devote more time and attention to music and its beneficial
influences upon themselves and patients. In Paris, music is being
introduced at the chief asylum for the benefit of the insane, the
hypochondriacs, and such like patients. Its introduction at the
"Retreat," at Hartford, Conn., has been attended with happy results.
The writer attributes the primary step towards recovery of several
patients of his, suffering under great mental, nervous, and bodily
prostration, to his ordering the piano or melodeon reopened.
Not long since I visited a patient at a distance. She was young and fair,
and "supposed to be in consumption," which is usually a flattering
disease, while this patient was laboring under great despondency,
bordering on despair. Her parents could not account for her dejection.
Determined not to hurry over the case, and seeing a closed piano in the
room, I asked if it was not used.
"No," replied the mother; "she has not touched it for more than three
months; she takes no interest in anything."
I looked upon the sad, fair face, and thought I had never seen a picture
of such utter hopelessness in a young maiden. I approached the piano, and
raised its lid. The ivory keys were all dusty. The mother dusted them off,
and with a great, deep sigh, whispered to me, "The dust will soon gather
on her coffin. She will never touch these keys again."
"Pooh!" I exclaimed. "You, madam, discourage her. Let me sing something
that will awaken her from her lethargy."
No matter how I played, or what I sang. It was the right key, the
sympathetic chord. The first notes aroused her. She lifted her great, dark
eyes for the first time. Great tears burst their bonds, thawing out the
winter-locked senses, awakening the spring-time flowers of hope, that led
to a summer season of health and happiness....
I know this was decidedly unprofessional; but what care I? The young girl
was aroused from her despondency, and her precious life saved. Medicine,
which before was of no avail, now took effect. O, I pity the poor fool
who _only_ has learned to cram drugs by the scruple, dram, and ounce down
the unwilling throats of his more pitiful patients because musty books
tell him to.
Dr. Mason F. Cogswell, a graduate of Yale, was a man eminent for piety and
benevolence, a scholar, and a successful practitioner, which none can
gainsay. "In music he was a proficient," said Professor Knight. While
practising medicine in Stamford, Conn., he was said to have instructed the
choir in psalm tunes and anthems, and other music, and adapted one to
every Sabbath in the year. He possessed a great library, and was for ten
years president of the State Medical Society. Dr. Cogswell had a deaf and
dumb daughter, and he originated the design of an asylum, which was more
fully developed by Mr. Gallaudet, in the Hartford asylum for the deaf and
dumb. He died in 1830, at the age of seventy.
I know of a great many excellent physicians who are musicians and lovers
of music. Guilmette is a first-class primo basso.
Who does not love to listen to the beautiful heart and home songs of Dr.
J. P. Ordway, such as "Home Delights," "Come to the Spirit Land," etc.?
"The twinkling Stars are laughing, Love," has been sung in every land, and
arranged into band music by all the best leaders of the world. A Boston
musician said to the writer recently, "After the audience had been
disgusted a whole hour by classic music, the house came down
enthusiastically on hearing one of Dr. Ordway's touching melodies."
The Germans seldom die of consumption. They are all musicians. There are
many authors and poets among the German doctors. The following gem, it is
needless to add, is not by one of the best authors:--
"December's came, and now der breezes
Howls vay up amidst der dreeses;
Now der boy mit ragged drouses
Shivering feeches home der cowses.
His boots vas old, und dorn his gloze is,
Und bless my shdars, how blue his nose is!"