xxviii. v. 3.
CHAPTER XIV.
ON THE MEDICINAL POWERS ATTRIBUTED TO MUSIC BY THE ANCIENTS.
The power of music over the human mind, as well as its influence on the
animal creation, has been variously attested; and its curative virtues
have been no less extolled by the ancients.[116] Martianus Capella assures
us, that fevers were removed by songs, and that Asclepiades cured
deafness by the sound of the trumpet. Wonderful indeed! that the same
noise which would occasion deafness in some, should be a specific for it
in others! It is making the viper cure its own bite. But, perhaps
Asclepiades was the inventor of the _acousticon_, or ear-trumpet, which
has been thought a modern discovery; or of the speaking-trumpet, which
is a kind of cure for distant deafness. These would be admirable proofs
of musical power![117] We have the testimony of Plutarch, and several
other ancient writers, that Thaletas the Cretan, delivered the
Lacedemonians from the pestilence by the sweetness of his lyre.
Xenocrates, as Martianus Capella further informs us, employed the sound
of instruments in the cure of maniacs; and Apollonius Dyscolus, in his
fabulous history (Historia Commentitia) tells us, from Theophrastus's
Treatise upon Enthusiasm, that music is a sovereign remedy for a
dejection of spirits, and disordered mind; and that the sound of the
flute will cure epilepsy and the sciatic gout.
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