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Music as cause and cure of illness – Dr Cheryce Kramer

A letter written to Hector Berlioz by one of his friends in 1848 likened the introduction of music therapy in the asylum at Auxerre to a form of aestheticized restraint which facilitated the running of the asylum:

Last year when I had visited I found the asylum to be well-appointed but full of grated and oppressive spaces in which a large number of inmates suffered frequent fits of rage and were forcibly confined like animals. So you can well imagine my astonishment when Girard of Cailleux, the asylum director, showed me open rooms which had been transformed into halls containing not a single piece of furniture out of place. The rooms were filled with unrestrained, calm people occupied with a variety of tasks. Stunned by this extraordinary improvement I asked the director by what method he had produced this result.

'Through gentle persuasion, activity and music which I use to reward the lunatics for good behaviour.'

By contrast the German psychiatrist Wilhelm Horn reported on another French asylum in 1831 where music and bathing had been combined to form a peculiar style of shock-therapy. According to Horn, the bath house, which had eight stone bath tubs, showers and a sauna, also contained a very loud organ, large drum and cymbals; as soon as a patient began to undergo treatment 'an awesome spectacle was unleashed which gave me fright even though I had been prepared for it'.