MELOTHERAPY. – Therapy by means of music. The principle that gave rise to this therapeutic aid was the general one, improperly deemed magical, of “similia similibus,” namely that, just as music is an index of perfect harmony, so a morbid state is one of rupture; therefore, applying musical therapy to the sick serves to restore within them that harmonious proportion which they had lost, and thus to bring them back to a state of health.
The idea of melotherapy is traced back to Pythagoras, but examples of it are found scattered everywhere (recall the beneficial calming influence that the sound of David’s lyre had on Saul’s violent crises). Depending on its effect—now stimulating, now calming—it is said that many have benefited from music to arouse analogous states in isolated individuals or entire communities. Asclepiades of Bithynia (1st–2nd century B.C.) recommended it in cases of psychopathy. During the Renaissance it was so widespread that Rabelais, in a satirical vein, imagines a Madonna Harmony who heals every kind of ailment.
The 17th and 18th centuries, as well as the past century, made use of melotherapy and recounted marvels about II. Mesmer, in his “séances,” had music played; Lichtenthal, in the 19th century, wrote *The Musical Physician*. Special mention must be made of that particular music with which, in the 17th century (and beyond), those who had been bitten by the tarantula were treated (hence the name “tarantella” for the music itself). Apart from the psychological aspect of arousing, by sympathy, states of mind in the individual analogous to those expressed by the “piece,” it seems that music also has an action on animals (increased latent secretion in cows) and on processes in which suggestion has no value (wound healing, etc.).