KUBELIK FIDDLED

Sun (Auckland), Volume IV, Issue 990, 5 June 1930, Page 16

KUBELIK FIDDLED

WHILE SURGEON OPERATED UPON HIM MUSICAL ANAESTHETIC "Music is the great destroyer of our pain.” In these words Kubelik, the violinist, declared recently his faith in the pain-killing power of music.

"Not long ago,” he said, "I had to undergo a painful operation for the excision of a polypus from my nose. It required two operations. In the first one I had a local anaesthetic, but it gave me little relief. "For the second operation I thought I would try and anaethetise myself with music. I therefore sat in the operating chair and concentrated my whole mind on Mozart’s D Major violin concerto. "I plunged myself so deeply into the music that I did not feel a single twitch of pain; in fact, I fiddled my way through the operation. LIKE CHLOROFORM "I believe that many minor but painful operations could be performed while under the influence of musical anaesthesia,” Kubelik concluded. “Of course, it requires strength of mind, but I believe that many people could achieve it. Jazz, and not necessarily classics, would achieve the same result. "I became as unaware of my surroundings as I would had I been under chloroform. I was wafted upon the ether of Mozart’s magic, and I did not feel the surgeon’s hands working right in front of my eyes.” In view of Kubelik’s experience, It is interesting to recall that some years ago Max Reger, a German musician. was made Doctor of Medicine by Berlin University "in recognition of the beneficial effect of his music on sick and oppressed mankind.” Although the writer does not wish to cast any doubts upon Kubelik’s story, he still bears in mind a similar operation performed upon himself a few weeks ago. He is prepared to admit, however, that a strong counter irritant, set up by an indifferent violinist playing bad jazz, might produce a state of musical anaesthesia upon a patient with a sensitive ear. So aggravated it is possible that the pain caused by the operation would become a mere trifle.