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THE WASHINGTON POST
Saturday, April 8, 1944

Army to Test Healing Power of Music Here

The U. S. Army Medical Center will begin this month the first scientifically controlled experiments with music as an aid to healing ever undertaken in this country.

Officially announced last night by Gen. Shelley U. Marietta, commandant of the Center, and authorized by the Surgeon General, tests are to be made on patients at Walter Reed Hospital which may add an entirely new page to the history of physical and mental therapy.

General Marietta emphasized in his statement, made before a meeting sponsored by the Institute of Music Therapy at the Arts Club, that the method will have to be "proved" effective before it will be employed on any large scale.

He stated, however, that the use of music in helping patients regain their health would be given every opportunity to show what is claimed for it by proponents in the Institute.

Beginning April 20 or shortly thereafter, the Institute, under the direction of Miss Frances Paperte, will begin work through professional musicians and singers specially trained for therapeutic practice.

Administration of the musical "doses" will be made at the discretion and direction of doctors in charge of the patients. The effects are to be carefully checked and patients treated in this manner compared for progress with patients in whose treatment the use of music is excluded.

Wherever possible, General Marietta said, patients suffering comparable disabilities and with the same nationalities or similar temperaments will be tested in determining the long-run effectiveness of musical therapy.

The method has been employed with amazing results in civilian hospitals in New York City, Miss Paperte said, although its scientific value has not been definitely established.

The first group of musical therapists at Walter Reed will be ASCAP musicians who have already completed specialized training at the Juilliard Institute in New York. Aside from artistic talent, these people are chose principally on the basis of personality and ability to establish an understanding with patients to be treated and given some psychiatric training for their jobs.

The whole idea is envisaged as an "adjunct" to medicine, but General Marietta acknowledged that he could see "great possibilities" in it. Until it has proven itself, however, he declared, "I am in the position of being from Missouri."

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