hich he
argued that music was beneficial in many maladies. In more recent
days there have been various experiments and cases brought
forward showing its efficacy in special conditions.

An American physician (W.F. Hutchinson) has shown that anaesthesia
may be produced with accurately made tuning forks at certain
rates of vibration (summarized in the _British Medical Journal_,
June 4, 1898). Ferrand in a paper read before the Paris Academy
of Medicine in September, 1895, gives reasons for classing some
kinds of music as powerful antispasmodics with beneficial
therapeutic action. The case was subsequently reported of a child
in whom night-terrors were eased by calming music in a minor key.
The value of music in lunatic asylums is well recognized; see
e.g., Naecke, _Revue de Psychiatrie_, October, 1897. Vaschide and
Vurpas (_Comptes Rendus de la Societe de Biologie_, December 13,
1902) have recorded the case of a girl of 20, suffering from
mental confusion with excitation and central motor
disequilibrium, whose muscular equilibrium was restored and
movements rendered more co-ordinated and adaptive under the
influence of music.

While there has been much extravagance in the ancient doctrine
concerning the effects of music, the real effects are still
considerable. Not only is this demonstrated by the experiments
already referred to (p. 118), indicating the efficacy of musical
sounds as physiological stimulants, but also by anatomical
considerations. The roots of the auditory nerves, McKendrick has
pointed out, are probably more widely distributed and have more
extensive connections than those of any other nerve. The
intricate connections of these nerves are still only being
unraveled. This points to an explanation of how music penetrates
to the very roots of our being, influencing by associational
paths reflex mechanisms both cerebral and somatic, so that there
is scarcely a function of the body that may not be affected by
the rhythmical pulsations, melodic progressions, and harmonic
combinations of musical tones. (_Nature_, June 15, 1899, p. 164.)

Just as we are not entitled from the ancient belief in the influence of
music on morals or the modern beliefs in its therapeutic influence--even
though this has sometimes gone to the length of advocating its use in
impotence[118]--to argue th