Music in Medicine

The use of music for work, marches, the stimulation of mass sentiment or emotional impact (patriotism, war, etc.), for entertainment, oblivion, mood change, mood creation, and background music for motion pictures, evokes realistic responses, where music is applied for its effect, rather than for its intrinsic value. It is therefore no surprise that the applied use of music (which has nothing to do with the active process of artistic creation) should be used in the care and treatment of the sick mind and body. I do not know what subjective responses result from such purely physical phenomena as vibration and harmonics but I am convinced that listeners are physiologically and psychically effected by such musical characteristics as mood, intensity, pitch and rhythmical outline. It seems to me that the right music should provoke remembrance and association of thoughts and situations more easily in a mental patient than methods using factual persuasion. Music can avoid the realistic approach and by its absolute progression abstractly recreate a familiarity of situation which may prove most useful in handling mental patients.