Music and medicine: Renaissance reflections on healing harmony.

You ask, Canigiani, why I so often combine the study of medicine with that of music. What, you say, has the trade of pharmacy to do with that of the lyre?….

Orpheus, in his book of hymns, asserts that Apollo, by his vital rays, bestows health and life on all and drives away disease. Furthermore, by the sounding strings, that is, their vibrations and power, he regulates everything…. So, since the patron of music and discoverer of medicine are one and the same god, it is hardly surprising that both arts are often practiced by one and the same man….

Plato and Aristotle taught, as we have often found from our own experience, that serious music maintains and restores this harmony to the parts of the soul, while medicine restores harmony to the parts of the body. Since the body and soul correspond to each other, as I have said, it is to care for the harmony of both body and soul in the same man….

For sound and song arise from consideration in the mind, the impulse of fantasy and the desire of the heart, and in disturbing the air and lending measure to it they vibrate the airy spirit of the listener, which is the link between body and soul. Thus sound and song easily arouse the fantasy, affect the heart and reach the inmost recesses of the mind; they still, and also set in motion, the humors and the limbs of the body.

Marsilio Ficino, letter to Antonio Canigiani, translation by members of the Language Department of the School for Economic Science, London

For other posts on music and health, see here.

On Ficino, see also here.