ABSTRACT
In 1880 Josef Breuer attended a young woman with an acute nervous cough triggered by hearing dance music. Her case became famous under the name Anna O. Whereas many nineteenth-century medical observers had seen the direct nervous stimulation of music as a possible cause of disease, Breuer and his collaborator Sigmund Freud argued that it was the symbolic role of the music in the patient’s life that led to her psychological and physical symptoms. This chapter considers the case in the context of shifting views of the relationship between music, nerves and the mind over the past 200 years, considering the role of gender, culture and science in framing the case and subsequent discussions of the topic.
