rro thought it good for the gout.
Aulus Gellius cites a work of Theophrastus, which recommends music as a
specific for the bite of a viper. Boyle and Shakspeare mention the
effects of music _super vesicam_. Kircher's "Musurgia," and Swinburne's
Travels, relate the effects of music on those who are bitten by the
tarantula. Sir W. Temple seems to have given credit to the stories of
the power of music over diseases.

The ancients, indeed, record miracles in the tales they relate of the
medicinal powers of music. A fever is removed by a song, and deafness is
cured by a trumpet, and the pestilence is chased away by the sweetness
of an harmonious lyre. That deaf people can hear best in a great noise,
is a fact alleged by some moderns, in favour of the ancient story of
curing deafness by a trumpet. Dr. Willis tells us, says Dr. Burney, of a
lady who could _hear_ only while _a drum was beating_, insomuch, that
her husband, the account says, hired a drummer as her servant, in order
to enjoy the pleasure of her conversation.

Music and the sounds of instruments, says the lively Vigneul de
Marville, contribute to the health of the body and the mind; they
quicken the circulation of the blood, they dissipate vapours, and open
the vessels, so that the action of perspiration is freer. He tells a
story of a person of distinction, who assured him, that once being
suddenly seized by violent illness, instead of a consultation of
physicians, he immediately called a band of musicians; and their
violins-played so well in his inside, that his bowels became perfectly
in tune, and in a few hours were harmoniously becalmed. I once heard a
story of Farinelli, the famous singer, who was sent for to Madrid, to
try the effect of his magical voice on the king of Spain. His majesty
was buried in the profoundest melancholy; nothing could raise an emotion
in him; he lived in a total oblivion of life; he sate in a darkened
chamber, entirely given up to the most distressing kind of madness. The
physicians ordered Farinelli at first to sing in an outer room; and for
the first day or two this was done, without any effect, on the royal
patient. At length, it was observed, that the king, awakening from his
stupor, seemed to listen; on the next day tears were seen starting in
his eyes; the day after he ordered the door of his chamber to be left
open--and at length the perturbed spirit entirely left our modern Saul,
and the _medicinal voice_ of Farinelli effec