music, the mind absorbs
those tones which have become silenced in itself, and in the body as a
necessary consequence; just as the stomach assimilates those
food-elements which are required to repair the waste of the system. Thus
our music-food is selected and distributed where it is most needed, and
this natural selection of musical vibrations acts specifically upon
those parts of the body which are out of harmony. A concert programme is
a _menu_ for the multitude. We hear all the music printed on it, but
digest very little of it. Some kinds of music thus heard, must
inevitably be wasted on the listener, or cause a musical
dyspepsia."[195:1]

The English clergyman and writer, Hugh Reginald Haweis, extols music as
a healthy outlet for emotion, and as especially adapted for young
ladies. Joy flows naturally into ringing harmonies, says he, while music
has the subtle power to soften melancholy, by presenting it with its
fine emotional counterpart.

A good play on the piano has not unfrequently taken the place of a good
cry upstairs, and a cloud of ill-temper has often been dispersed by a
timely practice. One of Schubert's friends used to say that, although
very cross before sitting down to his piano, a long scramble-duet
through a symphony or through one of his own delicious and erratic
pianoforte duets, always restored him to good humor.[196:1]

For many years the subject of musico-therapy has been discussed
editorially in the columns of the "London Lancet." We give some
statements emanating from this authority.

Music influences both brain and heart through the spinal cord, probably
on account of its vibratory or wave motion, which stimulates the
nerve-centres. . . .

It acts as a refreshing mental stimulant and restorative. Therefore it
braces depressed nervous tone and indirectly through the nervous
system reaches the tissues. It is of most use in depressed mental
conditions. . . . The value of music as a therapeutic agent cannot yet
be precisely stated, but it is no quack's nostrum. It is an intangible,
but effective aid of medicine.

It seems strange that the healing influence of music has not been more
thoroughly studied from a psychological standpoint, and utilized, when
one is mindful of the great store of evidence, gathered for centuries,
of the marked power of this agent upon the lower animals, and of its
worth as a mental, and therefore as a physical tonic and stimulant, for
human beings. A chief reaso