melancholia and music pre 1900

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I am doing a research paper on how people believed manic-depression was a result of melancholy and how music had a countering effect. Does anyone know anything about any of this and what people believed about these subjects before 1900?

-- Megan Leigh (mlblack@bsc.edu), May 06, 2003

Answers

You might check Gregory Zilboorg's A History of Medical Psychology, which is a defnitive source for early psychopathology. It has a couple dozen references to melancholy. For "anecdotal" material you might check the passages in the Old Testament related to King Saul's depression, which was in part "treated" by David playing the harp.

-- Hendrika Vande Kemp (hendrika@earthlink.net), May 06, 2003.

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