The author wishes to express his thanks to Mrs. Margaret E. Gurney and Miss Ida Evans for their assistance in the preparation of the manuscript. The author wishes to express his deep gratitude to Mr. Clifton Joseph Furness, Director of Academic Subjects at the New England Conservatory of Music for his supervision in the editing of this book. S. L. FOOTNOTES: [I.] _Pythagoras passed a black-smith shop one day and was struck with the beauty of the two sounds he heard coming from it. He entered the shop, studied the sounds closely and found that the two notes were an octave apart. This observation stimulated him to a detailed study of music which led to his musical philosophy. He believed that all nature and knowledge were contained in harmonic numbers, and that the world had been made in a musical harmonic accord. He invented a sacred quartenary of harmonic numbers to explain the phenomena of life. But Roussier believed that Pythagoras adapted his system from the Chinese._[70] _CHAPTER ONE_ HISTORY OF MUSIC IN MEDICINE “Music exalts each joy, allays each grief, Expels Diseases, softens ev’ry pain, Subdues the rage of poison and the plague, And hence the wise of ancient days ador’d One pow’r of Physic, Melody and Song.” “_The Art of Preserving Health_” by John Armstrong (1709-1779) In many fields of endeavor a scholar occasionally appears who not only makes a personal contribution to the knowledge and advancement of his subject but summarizes previously gained information so well that his work becomes at once a milestone and a beacon. In the field of music, such a man was Charles Burney, who began to publish a _General History of Music_ in 1776. This book was so thorough and scientifically critical that his conception is as modern as tomorrow. After listing all the instances of music as a therapeutic agent, he concludes: “Yet men delight in the marvellous; and many bigoted admirers of antiquity, forgetting that most of the extraordinary effects attributed to the music of the ancients had their origins in poetical inventions, and mythological allegories, have given way to credulity so far as to believe, or pretend to believe, these fabulous accounts, in order to play them off against modern music, which according to them, must remain in a state far inferior to the ancient, till it can operate all the effects that have been attributed to the music of Orpheus, Amphion and such wonder-working bards.”[15] It is well to begin a study of music in medicine with Burney’s restrained enthusiasm lest we fall into the error of building impossible temples of healing on the thin ice of untested claims. We shall begin with prehistoric times.