Medical Music

Dr. Edward Podolsky of Brooklyn, a great music-lover, likes to calm his irritable patients with phonograph records. Although little serious experimental work has been done on the physiological effects of music. Dr. Podolsky for years has been collecting scraps of information on the subject. This week he published a lively little scrapbook on music and medicine.* Interesting items:

P: Fast music increases metabolism and muscular energy, steps up the heartbeat, sends a rush of blood to the brain, elevates blood pressure. Slow, sentimental music produces opposite effects. Most stimulating are the swift tongue twisters of Gilbert & Sullivan. Most soothing: Kreisler's Old Refrain.

P: Certain sound waves produce subtle chemical changes in glands, muscles and nerves, "although ... no way has been found of measuring them." Laboratory evidence: shrill music played near an egg for about 30 seconds will coddle it. The body contains many chemical compounds similar to those found in eggs.

P: Soft music has a definite anesthetic effect, dulls mild sensations of pain. Dr. Podolsky claims that doctors can conquer more severe pain by playing "music in a fast aggressive tempo," such as The Toreador's Song from Carmen, Anchors Aweigh!, The Stars and Stripes Forever.

P: Music has long been used in the psychiatric wards of Bellevue and Johns Hopkins Hospitals with remarkable, if temporary, success. Schubert's Ave Maria will quiet raging maniacs, claims Dr. Podolsky, and Beethoven's Egmont Overture has cheered many a victim of melancholia. A champion of pure music, Dr. Podolsky finds small medical virtue in swing, warns psychiatrists off Wagner "warhorses" and "severely intellectual modern music," urges them to add Chopin and Mozart to their musical pharmacopoeia.

*THE DOCTOR PRESCRIBES Music--Frederick A. Stokes ($1.50).

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.