Melotherapy

MELOTHERAPY. - Therapy by means of music. The principle that gave rise to this therapeutic aid was the general one, improperly held to be magical, of "similia similibus," namely that, just as music is a sign of perfect harmony, so the morbid state is a sign of its rupture; therefore applying musical therapy to one who is ill amounts to restoring in him that harmonious proportion which he had lost, and thus restoring him to a state of health.

The melotherapeutic idea 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 the violent crises of Saul). Because of its effect, now stimulating, now calming, many are said to have benefited from music to arouse analogous states in isolated individuals or in whole communities. Asclepiades of Bithynia (1st-2nd centuries B.C.) recommended it in psychopathies. In the Renaissance it was so widespread that Rabelais, satirizing it, imagines a Madonna Harmony who heals every kind of ailment.
The 17th and 18th centuries, as well as the last century, made use of
m. and marvels were told of it. Mesmer in his
"sessions" had music played; Lichtenthal, in the
19th century, wrote the Medico musicale. A 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 cured (hence the name "tarantella" given to the music
itself). Apart from the psychological side of arousing by sympathy states of mind in the individual, analogous to those
expressed by the "piece," it seems that music has an action
also on animals (greater milk secretion in
cows) and on processes in which suggestion has no
value (healing of wounds, etc.).