oses. The
inspiration offered by music is well-known, and it is doubtless a
stimulant to the intellectual work. Bacon, Milton, Warburton, and
Alfieri needed music to stimulate them in their labors, and it is said
that Bourdaloue always played an air on the violin before preparing to
write.

According to the American Medico-Surgical Bulletin, "Professor
Tarchanoff of Saint Petersburg has been investigating the influence of
music upon man and other animals. The subject is by no means a new one.
In recent times Dagiel and Fere have investigated the effect of music
upon the respirations, the pulse, and the muscular system in man.
Professor Tarchanoff made use of the ergograph of Mosso, and found that
if the fingers were completely fatigued, either by voluntary efforts or
by electric excitation, to the point of being incapable of making any
mark except a straight line on the registering cylinder, music had the
power of making the fatigue disappear, and the finger placed in the
ergograph again commenced to mark lines of different heights, according
to the amount of excitation. It was also found that music of a sad and
lugubrious character had the opposite effect, and could check or
entirely inhibit the contractions. Professor Tarchanoff does not
profess to give any positive explanation of these facts, but he
inclines to the view that 'the voluntary muscles, being furnished with
excitomotor and depressant fibers, act in relation to the music
similarly to the heart--that is to say, that joyful music resounds
along the excitomotor fibers, and sad music along the depressant or
inhibitory fibers.' Experiments on dogs showed that music was capable
of increasing the elimination of carbonic acid by 16.7 per cent, and of
increasing the consumption of oxygen by 20.1 per cent. It was also
found that music increased the functional activity of the skin.
Professor Tarchanoff claims as the result of these experiments that
music may fairly be regarded as a serious therapeutic agent, and that
it exercises a genuine and considerable influence over the functions of
the body. Facts of this kind are in no way surprising, and are chiefly
of interest as presenting some physiologic basis for phenomena that are
sufficiently obvious. The influence of the war-chant upon the warrior
is known even to savage tribes. We are accustomed to regard this
influence simply as an ordinary case of psychic stimuli producing
physiologic effects.

"Professor Tarch