[99]
Lombard found, when investigating the normal variations in the knee-jerk,
that involuntary reflex processes are always reinforced by music; a
military band playing a lively march caused the knee-jerk to increase at
the loud passages and to diminish at the soft passages, while remaining
always above the normal level.[100]
With this stimulating influence of rhythm and music on the neuro-muscular
system--which may or may not be direct--there is a concomitant influence
on the circulatory and breathing apparatus. During recent years a great
many experiments have been made on man and animals bearing on the effects
of music on the heart and respiration. Perhaps the earliest of these were
carried out by the Russian physiologist Dogiel in 1880.[101] His methods
were perhaps defective and his results, at all events as regards man,
uncertain, but in animals the force and rapidity of the heart were
markedly increased. Subsequent investigations have shown very clearly the
influence of music on the circulatory and respiratory systems in man as
well as in animals. That music has an apparently direct influence on the
circulation of the brain is shown by the observations of Patrizi on a
youth who had received a severe wound of the head which had removed a
large portion of the skull wall.
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