American citizen. [volume] (Canton, Miss.) 1864-1890, 1875-07-17
Music as Medicine.

The horse knows what he owes to hi
| bells. The factory girls have been in
stinctivcly forced into singing, finding il
ii solacc and assistance in work. Ant
music the health giver-what an untrOd
den field is there! Have we never no
ticed an invalid forget pain and wearines.
under the stimulus of music? Have you
never seen pale check flush up, dull
eye sparkle, an alcrtness and vigOr take
possession of the whole frame, and ami
nation succeed to apathy? What does
all this mean? II means truth that We
have not fully graspcd, a truth pregnant
with vast results to body and mind. Il
means that music attacks the nervous sys
tenn directly, reaches and rOuscs where
physic and Il change of air can neither
reach nor rouse. Music will some day
become powerful and acknowledged
therapeutic; and it is one especially ap
propriatc to this excited age. Half our
diseases physicians say all our dis
cases-come from disorder of the nerves.
How many ills of the mind precedc the
ills of the body? Boredom makes more
patients than fever; want of interest and
excitement, stagnation of the emotional
life, or the fatigue of overweight emotion
lies at the root of half the ill-health of our
young men and women. Can we doubt the
power of music to break up that stagnation ?
Or, again, can we doubt its power to
soOthe, to recreate an Overstralned emo
tional life by bending the bow the other
way? There are moods of exhausted
feeling in which certain kinds of music
would act like poison, just as whip and
spur, which encourage the racer at first,
tire him to death at last. There are other
kinds of music which soothe and, if /
may Use the word, lubricate the worn out
ways of the nervous centers. You will
ask what music is good for that? We re-
ply, Judgment and common sense, and
above all sympathy, affectionate and mu-
steal sympathy, will partly be your guide,
but experience must decide Let some
person well versed in the divine art sit at
the piano and let the tired one Elie on a
couch and prescribe for herselfor for him
self This will happen: 'Do not play
that Tannhauser overture just now; it
wears me out, cannot bear ~ or, " Yes
sing that 'Du Dist die RM,' and after
that must hear Mendelssohn's Notturno,'
out of the Midsummer Nights Dream;'
and then-and then-what! must come
next must be left to the tact and quick
sympathy of the musician. | have known
cases where an hour of this treatment did
more good than bottlefuls of bark or pail
fuls of globules but do not wish to over
state the case. l merely plead for an un-
truth and l point to new
vocation-the vocation of the musical
healer. How many girl might turn her
at present uncared-for and generally use
less musical abilities to this gentle and
tender human use.-GO0d Words.
AT a dinner-party recently given in
London by Mr.. Lowe, ex-Chancellor of
the Exchequer, the conversation turned
upon the unnecessary passages in the
marriage services, when the member for
the London University referred to the alb
surdity of man who had no property
whatever gravely declaring that he en-
dowed his bride with the whole of his pos
sessions. Now when l married." re-
marked Mr.. Lowe, g hadn't shilling in