Heart-beating music for the unconscious mind
Doctors in an Illinois hospital are trying a musical therapy experiment to see if harp music can help calm a racing, erratic heartbeat. Plucking at the heart strings By Lindsey Tanner The Associated Press URBANA, ILL. (Dec 21, 2005) Surrounded by cutting edge medical equipment, the 83-year-old patient lay unconscious and sedated, with skinny electrode-equipped […]
Doctors in an Illinois hospital are trying a musical therapy experiment to see if harp music can help calm a racing, erratic heartbeat.
Plucking at the heart strings
By Lindsey Tanner
The Associated Press
URBANA, ILL. (Dec 21, 2005)
Surrounded by cutting edge medical equipment, the 83-year-old patient lay unconscious and sedated, with skinny electrode-equipped catheters snaking from veins in her right thigh and shoulder into her heart.
They provided a conduit for a video monitor showing the squiggly waves of Edith Zook’s irregular heartbeat.
Then while the patient snored and her doctor silently examined the ups and downs of rainbow-coloured heart waves on the screen, a harpist wearing blue hospital scrubs started playing the familiar strains of Pachelbel’s Canon. This wasn’t background music, but part of the medical procedure.
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