Pathology

Ever since primitive medicine men cast out devils with incantations and dances, music and medicine have kept up a nodding acquaintance. Asclepius, Greek god of healing, used three methods to treat the ill: drugs, surgery and "soft music." Ancient Greek Theophrastus used music to cure snakebite; Ancient Greek Pythagoras used it to treat insanity. The savage breast of many a high-strung potentate, from Saul to Hitler, has been soothed by music's charms.

Modern medicos do not place quite so much reliance on the curative properties of music as some of their earlier colleagues did. But last week some 300 students, faculty members and guests gathered at Johns Hopkins to hear a program of music written for pathological purposes. The program, put together by famed Medical Historian Dr. Henry Ernest Sigerist, included a "Frottola" by 16th-century Composer Marchetto Cara, written to help cure the Marchese of Mantua of syphilis; a piece played in the 17th Century to cure tarantism, popularly believed to be caused by the bite of a tarantula; hymnlike music originally addressed to St. Sebastian, who was believed to protect the faithful against the plague.

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