For the patient with a recently wired fractured jaw, singing gives gentle joint motion and restores confidence in the ability to use the jaw again. The same thing applies to patients with recovering tempero-mandibular joint pathology. A patient with poor jaw motion cannot articulate well, but can sing more nearly like the well patient than he can talk. Singing can begin at the level of humming and progress through scale practice to actual song instruction. When several patients are available for vocal exercises, a trio, quartet or other group arrangement will create greater interest. Except in hospitals devoted to the treatment of chronic disease, the turn-over in patients will make group singing uncertain. FOOTNOTES: [II.] “_a discussion took place in 1913 on the physical significance of that mystic quality called “touch” by which a player attempts to vary the quality of the notes ... but it was concluded that the velocity of striking was all that could be varied by the player._” _Richardson, E. G.--Sound, p. 106_ _CHAPTER FOUR_ PSYCHIATRY AND MUSIC “His music mads me, let it sound no more, For though it helps madmen to their wits, To me it seems it will make wise men mad.” _Richard III_, Shakespeare Gaston[31] believes that “The basic reason for the arts throughout the history of mankind has been the resultant mental hygiene benefits. The common creative urge, desire for diversion, and search for satisfactory expression exist in all people. Music--above all arts--guarantees the fulfillment of these elemental urges, and therein lies its greatest value.” The suggestive power of music has given rise to a series of legends which go back to the very origin of civilization. But the methods of experimental physiology, so precise in the study of organic function, lead to no clear and easy picture in the presence of reactions as complex and subjective as those of esthetic emotion and artistic pleasures. The task of evaluating the effect of music on the mind is made increasingly difficult by the personal equation, and when to this is added the distortion of mental disease, great caution must be used in the approach, technique, and recommendations to be followed in the use of music as applied to psychiatry[27]. Altschuler[3] finds that music stimulates the libido, which he defines as “the great amorphous power, the vital spark, out of which the will to pleasure, the longing for love or passion for procreation take their origin.” He believes that music is the only “medicine” which helps to convert instinctual forces into socially acceptable forms. “Stimulated by music, man can still offer his lowly instincts free expressions, camouflaged by jitter-bugging and boogie-woogieing.... Indeed there is therapeutic acumen to an agent which is capable of reconciling the instinctual with the social, and the sensual with the spiritual.”