In the Memoirs of the Academy of Sciences for 1707 and 1708, we meet
with many accounts of diseases, which, after having resisted and baffled
all the most efficacious remedies in common use, had, at length, given
way to the soft impressions of harmony. M. de Mairan, in the Memoirs of
the same Academy, 1737, reasons upon the medicinal powers of music in
the following manner:--"It is from the mechanical and involuntary
connexion between the organ of hearing, and the consonances excited in
the outward air, joined to the rapid communication of the vibrations of
this organ to the whole nervous system, that we owe the cure of
spasmodic disorders, and of fevers attended with a delirium and
convulsions, of which our Memoirs furnish many examples."
The late learned Dr. Branchini, professor of physic at Udine, collected
all the passages preserved in ancient authors, relative to the medicinal
application of music, by Asclepiades; and it appears from this work that
it was used as a remedy by the ancient Egyptians, Hebrews, Greeks, and
Romans, not only in acute, but chronical disorders.
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