Morning journal and courier., 1886-09-16
NO. 22O.
The Playing of old Familiar Music
 Revives a Man From a Trance.
From the New Orleans Times Democrat

From the New Orleans Times Democrat
 Among the men of a Spanish regiment sent to Havana about two years ago was certain young Galician, raw recruit, who became prey to the most intense form of nostalgia after a very brief sojourn in that lovely, but feverish land, which has already devoured more than hundred thousand soldier lives. The young recruits condition became desperate-then changed suddenly into catalepsy. All efforts to revive him proved useless; finally the physicians at tempted to sustain life by forcing open the soldiers mouth and pouring milk into his stomach. The effort was successful and life was maintained week after week by artificial means. But still the trance could not be broken. Six months passed and the soldier had neither spoken nor moved. His limbs, inert but flexible, preserved any position into which they were thrown-he would re- main sitting if placed in a sitting posture, or even standing if perfectly balanced upon his feet; but otherwise he continued lifeess as statue. After the lapse of one whole year there was no change in his condition. Eff teen months passed-eighteen months-an unprecedented phenomenon! Then one of the attending physicians sent for a muneira Ca popular stringed instrument peculiar to northern Spain), and ordered fellow coun- tryman of the patient to play some of the old mountain airs upon it. The effect ot the music was like witchcraft; the fixed eyes frightened, the long torpid muscles of the face began to quiver with such a trembling as the dead might feel at the first great sum- mons of the resurrection. Astonished, the physician bade the musician continue; while another compatriot took the sufferers unre- sisting hand and talked to him in the dialect ot his own mountain village. He neither moved nor spoke, but the tears began to stream from his eyes so profusely that fear ing the results of too much emotion, the ex- pertinent was stopped. Then two days later the munelra was again brought in. and the signs of life increased with it's playing; the face resumed it's natural color, the gaze it's intelligence, the brain it's functions. And gradually after many days of this musical healing, vital force returned, and the soldier, once more we'll and strong, was able to leave the hospital forever. Needless to relate what a profound feeling this incident pro- duced among the Spaniards of Havana-all of whom doubtless love their native land not less dearly than the simple soldier whose affection for it had so nearly condemned him to the grave, and who had been literally awakened from the death sleep by the voice of that land, speaking to him across the broad seas through the clumsy chords of muneira. But these Spaniards have a charming and impulsive way of exhibiting syuPdthy; GHey uo HoG Herely utter WOfus and extend hands. In this case they made the object of their visit happy man-richer than most of his people at home, for he car ries back with him to his mountain village the snug little sum of eight thousand dol lars-quite fortune for any Galician peas- ant. Spite of revolution, fever, bad govern ment and financial loss, the bond that fast ems Cuba to Spain will not be easily broken; it is 8 bond of flesh stronger than tether of steel. Love is a better safeguard of the for eign interest of the mother country than are bayonets; and since the day when Spanish ladies in Cuba cut their beautiful hair to wave it into the portrait of patroit, the af- lection of the Spanish colonists for Spain has lost none of it's noble fire