Primitive Psycho-Therapy and QuackeryLawrence, Robert Means
History
Primitive Psycho-Therapy and Quackery
Lawrence, Robert Means
Medical misconceptions; Medicine -- History; Mental healing; Quacks and quackery
Polybius, the Greek historian of the second century B. C., wrote that
music softened the manners of the ancient Arcadians, whose climate was
rigorous. Whereas the inhabitants of Cynætha (the modern town of
Kalavrita) in the Peloponnesus, who neglected this art, were the most
barbarous in Greece. Baron de Montesquieu, in "The Spirit of Laws,"
remarked that as the popular exercises of wrestling and boxing had a
natural tendency to render the ancient Grecians hardy and fierce, there
was a necessity for tempering those exercises with others, with a view
to rendering the people more susceptible of humane feelings. For this
purpose, said Montesquieu, music, which influences the mind by means of
the corporeal organs, was extremely proper. It is a kind of medium
between manly exercises, which harden the body, and speculative
sciences, which are apt to render us unsociable and sour. . . . Let us
suppose, for example, a society of men so passionately devoted to
hunting as to make it their sole employment; they would doubtless
contract thereby a kind of rusticity and fierceness. But if they
happened to imbibe a taste for music, we should quickly perceive a
sensible difference in their customs and manners. In short, the
exercises used by the Greeks could raise but one kind of passions,
namely, fierceness, indignation, and cruelty. But music excites all
these, and is likewise able to inspire the soul with a sense of pity,
lenity, tenderness, and love.
In a rare work, styled "Reflexions on Antient and Modern Music, with the
application to the Cure of Diseases,"[175:1] we find that the custom
prevailed, among certain nations of old, of initiating their youth into
the studies of harmony and music. Whereby, it was believed, their minds
became formed to the admiration and esteem of proportion, order, and
beauty, and the cause of virtue was greatly promoted. "Music," moreover,
"extends the fancy beyond its ordinary compass, and fills it with the
gayest images."
Christianus Pazig, in "Magic Incantations," page 29, relates that the
wife of Picus, King of Latium, was able by her voice to soothe and
appease wild animals, and to arrest the flight of birds.
And the French traveller Villamont asserted that crocodiles were
beguiled by the songs of Egyptian fishermen to leave the Nile, and
allowed themselves to be led off and exposed for sale in the markets.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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