<h2>THE GENIAL IDIOT DISCUSSES THE MUSIC CURE</h2>
<h3>BY JOHN KENDRICK BANGS</h3>
<p>"Good morning, Doctor," said the Idiot as Capsule, M.D., entered the
dining-room. "I am mighty glad you've come. I've wanted for a long time
to ask you about this music cure that everybody is talking about and get
you if possible to write me out a list of musical nostrums for every day
use. I noticed last night before going to bed that my medicine chest was
about run out. There's nothing but one quinine pill and a soda-mint drop
in it, and if there's anything in the music cure I don't think I'll have
it filled again. I prefer Wagner to squills, and compared to the
delights of Mozart, Hayden and Offenbach those of paregoric are nit."</p>
<p>"Still rambling, eh?" vouchsafed the Doctor. "You ought to submit your
tongue to some scientific student of dynamics. I am inclined to think,
from my own observation of its ways, that it contains the germ of
perpetual motion."</p>
<p>"I will consider your suggestion," replied the Idiot. "Meanwhile, let us
consult harmoniously together on the original point. Is there anything
in this music cure, and is it true that our Medical Schools are
hereafter to have conservatories attached to them in which aspiring
young M.D.'s are to be taught the <i>materia musica</i> in addition to the
<i>materia medica</i>?"</p>
<p>"I had heard of no such idiotic proposition," returned<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_1106" id="Page_1106"></SPAN></span> the Doctor. "And
as for the music cure I don't know anything about it. Haven't heard
everybody talking about it, and doubt the existence of any such thing
outside of that mysterious realm which is bounded by the four corners of
your own bright particular cerebellum. What do you mean by the music
cure?"</p>
<p>"Why, the papers have been full of it lately," explained the Idiot. "The
claim is made that in music lies the panacea for all human ills. It may
not be able to perform a surgical operation like that which is required
for the removal of a leg, and I don't believe even Wagner ever composed
a measure that could be counted on successfully to eliminate one's
vermiform appendix from its chief sphere of usefulness, but for other
things, like measles, mumps, the snuffles, or indigestion, it is said to
be wonderfully efficacious; What I wanted to find out from you was just
what composers were best for which specific troubles."</p>
<p>"You'll have to go to somebody else for the information," said the
Doctor. "I never heard of the theory and, as I said before, I don't
believe anybody else has, barring your own sweet self."</p>
<p>"I have seen a reference to it somewhere," put in Mr. Whitechoker,
coming to the Idiot's rescue. "As I recall the matter, some lady had
been cured of a nervous affection by a scientific application of some
musical poultice or other, and the general expectation seems to be that
some day we shall find in music a cure for all our human ills, as the
Idiot suggests."</p>
<p>"Thank you, Mr. Whitechoker," said the Idiot gratefully. "I saw that
same item and several others besides, and I have only told the truth
when I say that a large number of people are considering the
possibilities of music as a substitute for drugs. I am surprised that
Doctor<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_1107" id="Page_1107"></SPAN></span> Capsule has neither heard nor thought about it, for I should
think it would prove to be a pleasant and profitable field for
speculation. Even I who am only a dabbler in medicine, and know no more
about it than the effects of certain remedies upon my own symptoms, have
noticed that music of a certain sort is a sure emollient for nervous
conditions."</p>
<p>"For example?" said the Doctor. "Of course we don't doubt your word, but
when a man makes a statement based upon personal observation it is
profitable to ask him what his precise experience has been merely for
the purpose of adding to our own knowledge."</p>
<p>"Well," said the Idiot, "the first instance that I can recall is that of
a Wagner Opera and its effects upon me. For a number of years I suffered
a great deal from insomnia. I could not get two hours of consecutive
sleep and the effect of my sufferings was to make me nervous and
irritable. Suddenly somebody presented me with a couple of tickets for a
performance of Parsifal and I went. It began at five o'clock in the
afternoon. For twenty minutes all went serenely and then the music began
to work. I fell into a deep and refreshing slumber. The intermission
came, and still I slept on. Everybody else went home, dressed for the
evening part of the performance, had their dinner, and returned. Still I
slept and continued so to do until midnight when one of the gentlemanly
ushers came and waked me up and told me that the performance was over. I
rubbed my eyes and looked about me. It was true, the great auditorium
was empty, and was gradually darkening. I put on my hat and walked out
refreshed, having slept from five twenty until twelve, or six hours and
forty minutes, straight. That was one instance. Two weeks later I went
again, this time to hear <i>Die Goetherdammerung</i>. The results were the
same, only the effect was in<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_1108" id="Page_1108"></SPAN></span>stantaneous. The curtain had hardly risen
before I retired to the little ante-room of the box our party occupied
and dozed off into a fathomless sleep. I didn't wake up this time until
nine o'clock the next day, the rest of the party having gone off without
awakening me, as a sort of joke. Clearly Wagner, according to my way of
thinking, then deserves to rank among the most effective narcotics known
to modern science. I have tried all sorts of other things—sulfonal,
trionel, bromide powders, and all the rest and not one of them produced
anything like the soporific results that two doses of Wagner brought
about in one instant, and best of all there was no reaction. No
splitting headache or shaky hand the next day, but just the calm, quiet,
contented feeling that goes with the sense of having got completely
rested up."</p>
<p>"You run a dreadful risk, however," said the Doctor, with a sarcastic
smile. "The Wagner habit is a terrible thing to acquire, Mr. Idiot."</p>
<p>"That may be," said the Idiot. "Worse than the sulfonal habit by a great
deal I am told, but I am in no danger of becoming a victim to it while
it costs from five to seven dollars a dose. In addition to this
experience I have also the testimony of a friend of mine who was cured
of a frightful attack of the colic by Sullivan's Lost Chord played on a
Cornet. He had spent the day down at Asbury Park and had eaten not
wisely but too copiously. Among other things that he turned loose in his
inner man were two plates of Lobster Salade, a glass of fresh cider and
a saucerful of pistache ice-cream. He was a painter by profession and
the color scheme he thus introduced into his digestive apparatus was too
much for his artistic soul. He was not fitted by temperament to
assimilate anything quite so strenuously chromatic as that, and as a
consequence shortly after he had retired to his studio for the<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_1109" id="Page_1109"></SPAN></span> night
the conflicting tints began to get in their deadly work and within two
hours he was completely doubled up. The pain he suffered was awful.
Agony was bliss alongside of the pangs that now afflicted him and all
the palliatives and pain killers known to man were tried without avail,
and then, just as he was about to give himself up for lost, an amateur
cornetist who occupied a studio on the floor above began to play the
Lost Chord. A counter-pain set in immediately. At the second bar of the
Lost Chord the awful pain that was gradually gnawing away at his vitals
seemed to lose its poignancy in the face of the greater suffering, and
physical relief was instant. As the musician proceeded the internal
disorder yielded gradually to the external and finally passed away
entirely, leaving him so far from prostrated that by one <span class="smcap">a.m.</span> he was out
of bed and actually girding himself with a shotgun and an Indian Club to
go upstairs for a physical encounter with the cornetist."</p>
<p>"And you reason from this that Sullivan's Lost Chord is a cure for
Cholera morbus, eh?" sneered the Doctor.</p>
<p>"It would seem so," said the Idiot. "While the music continued my friend
was a well man ready to go out and fight like a warrior, but when the
cornetist stopped—the colic returned and he had to fight it out in the
old way. In these episodes in my own experience I find ample
justification for my belief and that of others that some day the music
cure for human ailments will be recognized and developed to the full.
Families going off to the country for the summer instead of taking a
medicine-chest along with them will go provided with a music-box with
cylinders for mumps, measles, summer complaint, whooping-cough,
chicken-pox, chills and fever and all the other ills the flesh is heir
to. Scientific experiment will demonstrate before long what composition
will cure specific ills. If a<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_1110" id="Page_1110"></SPAN></span> baby has whooping-cough, an anxious
mother, instead of ringing up the Doctor, will go to the piano and give
the child a dose of Hiawatha. If a small boy goes swimming and catches a
cold in his head and is down with a fever, his nurse, an expert on the
accordeon, can bring him back to health again with three bars of Under
the Bamboo Tree after each meal. Instead of dosing kids with cod liver
oil when they need a tonic, they will be set to work at a mechanical
piano and braced up on Narcissus. There'll Be a Hot Time In The Old Town
To-Night will become an effective remedy for a sudden chill. People
suffering from sleeplessness can dose themselves back to normal
conditions again with Wagner the way I did. Tchaikowski, to be well
Tshaken before taken, will be an effective remedy for a torpid liver,
and the man or woman who suffers from lassitude will doubtless find in
the lively airs of our two-step composers an efficient tonic to bring
their vitality up to a high standard of activity. Nothing in it? Why,
Doctor, there's more in it that's in sight to-day that is promising and
suggestive of great things in the future than there was of the principle
of gravitation in the rude act of that historic pippin that left the
parent tree and swatted Sir Isaac Newton on the nose."</p>
<p>"And the Drug Stores will be driven out of business, I presume," said
the Doctor.</p>
<p>"No," said the Idiot. "They will substitute music for drugs, that is
all. Every man who can afford it will have his own medical phonograph or
music-box, and the drug stores will sell cylinders and records for them
instead of quinine, carbonate of soda, squills, paregoric and other
nasty tasting things they have now. This alone will serve to popularize
sickness and instead of being driven out of business their trade will
pick up."<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_1111" id="Page_1111"></SPAN></span></p>
<p>"And the Doctor? And the Doctor's gig and all the appurtenances of his
profession—what becomes of them?" demanded the Doctor.</p>
<p>"We'll have to have the Doctor just the same to prescribe for us, only
he will have to be a musician, but the gig—I'm afraid that will have to
go," said the Idiot.</p>
<p>"And why, pray?" asked the Doctor. "Because there are no more drugs must
the physician walk?"</p>
<p>"Not at all," said the Idiot. "But he'd be better equipped if he drove
about in a piano-organ, or if he preferred an auto on a steam
calliope."<span class='pagenum'><SPAN name="Page_1112" id="Page_1112"></SPAN></span></p>
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