Music and Mental Health By

EDWARD

PODOLSKY,

M.D.

whose sole task is caring for the mentally ill have realised that music is one of the best medicines for the mind. Several years ago Dr. Egbert Guernsey said : "If every hospital or asylum inducted in its medical staff a musical director, and if every physician and trained musician understood the nature and action of music, there is no telling the good that might be accomplished, the lives brightened and the tangled brains restored

Physicians

long

to

harmony."

similar mind was Dr. Emmett Dent, for many years of the Manhattan State Hospital. After segregating a number of patients for a time and recording the effects of especially selected music upon them, Dr. Dent became an enthusiastic user of music as a means of alleviating some of the symptoms of the unsound mind. He said : "Music is responsible for cures among the insane, and improvements of patients seemingly in a hopeless condition are little short of marvellous." Of

a

Superintendent

Later, the Superintendent of the State Hospital in Middleton, Connecticut, organised an orchestra in that institution which

provided

music for

patients

at meal

time.

He stated

:?

99

Music and Mental Health.

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