Pythagoras and Musical Concords.

Stahl, Pythagoras and Musical Concords , Classical Weekly, 36 (1942:Oct.-1943:June) p.5 CLASSICAL liness, Thoreau sees in it an antidote for the wasteful ways of his fellow Americasis. indication of the extent and variety of Thoreau's interest in the ancient agriculturist. When one has conpoi of an Aia De Re Ru, which watt without a pi and this design nu un values forthe vga sta by the | FE tition of the experiment. If one beats a piece of upon an anvil with hammers of different wei is little if any difference in the pitch of the 5 When a one-pound hammer, and 2 two-pound Il were used, it was not possible, if ane turned his back, . in upon him that Thoreau would not have them WEEKLY was the comto tell which hammer was striking the metal: Wim H. Stam. NEW YORK UNIVERSITY Joun Pau. PrrrcHarD WASHINGTON AND JEFFERSON COLLEGE A Control Experiment in Antiquity In Devils, Drugs, and Doctors (New York 1 Pythagoras and Musical Concords Although modern scholars are inclined to credit rogna waht: Ss disdire cf el recente mais count way chanced u een= which the » TC» passing by a blacksmith shop and heard smiths beating intervals of a fourth, a fifth, and an octave. After making tests, he decided that the difference in weight of the hammers was le for the difference in pitch. He recorded the weights of the hammers and attached other weights, equal to those of the hammers, to strings of the same material, length and thickness. He found that the same intervals resulted: weights of twelve and six units produced the octave, of ing statement: “All that is necessary to do to prove whether antimony is or is not a cure for typhoid fever is to administer the drug to a hundred patients with typhoid fever and to kecp a record of the number who recover; and as a ‘control to keep a record of the number of recoveries en emi, Pysbagorna happomei to be e and eight or nine units gave the fifth, of twelve and nine a hundred patients with typhoid who are not treated with antimony.”:On the same pa he says: “This simple method for determinin curative value of drugs did not come into use until the ra nineteenth century." When did the procedure of control experiments originate? Pliny the Elder, who mentions kinds dE irperimed, mures 10 queres mondi WE ay dose or four that were carried out in a truly scientific attitude of mind, and in none of these was a control used.! The device was known to the ancients, however, for a I i È Athen- 3 or eight and six the fourth, and weights of nine and eight units gave the tone. The physical impossibility of such a result bas lon proportional.to the number of units of weight but rather to the square root of thèse units. I do not know who first drew attention to ‘chis truth. It isnoted by E. 227adA . 2.\au = 1346 ead by Di ÈMente in the eiletata Smith’s Dictionary of Greek and Roman Antiquities. Assuming that the linear density of two similar strin of equal length remains constant, one weight (or tension) would have to be four times as great as the That the account is fabricated and that it is not a te Met Da ee me. 1.85; F. E. Robbins in Robbins and Karpinski, Studies in istic Series 16, 1926), 18. ly Heath in Legacy of Greece goras” greatest discovery” (Oxford . 2 Manuale Hasmonicum 6 (Musici Scriptores Greeci, ed. C. Jan, 2458). Copyright (c) 2004 ProQuest Information and Learning Company Copyright (c) Classical Association of the Atlantic States, Inc. i gst, we find Howard W. Haggard making the falle + HTjiPutbilitiIHAl i 1 BERti fe E miti i REE uit HE¿jeeTfe iiflee T E inattSEEaf pe ne j i LE È } RE FEE if