HEALED BY MUSIC

New Zealand Times, Volume XLIV, Issue 10298, 5 June 1919, Page 7

HEALED BY MUSIC

EXPERIMENT IN AMERICA. AN IDEA WITH A BIG FUTURE. It may bo only a. short time (says a writer in the "Now York Evening Post") before it will be a matter of common knowledge and consent that music, by its infinite and finely-shaded rhythm and vibration', timbre, and pitch., can heal not only mental but certain kinds of bodily illness. But just at present it is a totally now idea, and is being brought to attention for the first time through Miss Margaret »Anderton, wJio has been working along these lines with Canadian soldiers for some time. "It is the object of the course to covor the psycho-physiologioal action of music and to provido practical training for therapeutic treatment uaider medical control," stated an announcement by the authorities of Columbia Uniw:\sity, referring to tlie course under its auspices. Miss Anderton is an Englishwoman by birth and a pianist by profession, and from the timo when she first begun to really think about anything, '.she says, she has been thinking n'i"'.;\ niul reading about and esperin'■■ '.-,<« with the practical and posi- ;! ■•jr'ccts of music, and gradually do- • ■■■iiujr her ideas until they might be -..,r:cd as an assistance to the medical profession. Not that there are many books to read. There are very few, and those few chiefly French. "When I was in Paris studying/" Miss Anderton said, "I picked up a book one day which dealt,with the subject. That gave new

impetus tomyown xese&rdh work, which has really been going on all my life. But, aside from the few French books I found, there seems to be nothing as yet to learn from books about it. Almost all I have found out I have found out for myself. Little things occurred constantly to throw some light on the subject; and then, finally the war came, which focussed things for me. "There are two chief ways of treating patients," Miss Anderton continued, "though in detail no two cases can be treated alike. But, as, a general thing, I administer, tho.music. for. any form of war neurosis,, which is-largely mental, and have-.the man produce the music i himself in orthopaedic cases or those of paralysis. Different, instruments . are used for different, types of trouble. The timbre...of, an,instrument probably -plays the largest part in musical- healing, and for this reason wind-instruments are good because of their -peculiar quality. Wood-instruments are particularly potent for a certain kind of war neurosis because of their penetrating, sustained tone. Instruments are usually better than vocal music, for with the human voico the personal element, which is usually not desirable, enters in. At times, however, the voice is best. The timbre of wood instruments, however, rtiiccts the nervo centres more than does the or tho. piano. .This is especially good/witl}, deaf,people, who feel the vibrations in the spine.!' ~ . , . . Some of the.cures seam lititle short of miraculous—and it depends on the definition of the... word miracle whether they are. short of it. Memories have boon brought back-to men suffering with aphasia.;.acute temporary insanity done away with; paralysed muscles restored..

One captain who had been hurled m * the air and then buried in debris at th, bursting of a bomb had never been abL to remember even his own name untik the music got him. Tests have been made upon well men, and it has been ascertained that certain pitches or harmonic combinations have a certain bodily effect. At present the effect on tho throat of a certain chord in & certain key is being investigated, and it may prove to be of help in dealing with paralysis of the jaw. ""..' The correspondence between co ~ u J and sound vibrations is also threaded into the healing work. This, too, has been worked in for years by Miss ton. "I had often thought about it, she said, "but it w&s crystallised for mo one night after a concert, when a man came to mo in a state of-great excitement, and asked me why he had seen a certain colour around a piano all the time that I was playing a certain composition. I looked up the vibrations of that colour, and they were the same as the vibrations of the dominant tone of tho piece."