The Piano Plague: The Nineteenth-Century Medical Critique of Female Musical Education

The role of music in nineteenth-century female education has been seen primarily in the context of the middle class cult of domesticity, and the relationship of music to medicine in the period has generally been viewed in terms of music therapy. Nevertheless, for much of the century there was serious medical discussion about the dangers of excessive music in girls' education. Many of the leading psychiatrists and gynaecologists of the nineteenth century argued that music could over-stimulate the nervous system, playing havoc with vulnerable female nerves and reproductive organs, and warned of the consequences of music lessons on the developing bodies of teenage girls. Two rival models of music's effects competed and were combined. One suggested that music led to illness by provoking sensuality, imagination and sexuality; the other argued that it was a source of neurasthenic fatigue because of intellectual strain.