Medicine, ENT and music: a mythological approach.

Music and Medicine are united by Mythology. Apollo links them with his lyre and the snake that accompanies him. He has two sons, one called Asclepius, the Physician, and the other called Orpheus, the Musician. Elsewhere, poor taste in music, the occasional benefits of deafness, the charisma of music, the masking effect of noise and the echo effect are personified by mythical characters like Midas, Ulysses, the Sirens, Orpheus, the Maenads or the nymph Echo. And in all these cases, the ear or the voice are part of the fabric of their marvellous adventures. So ENT is involved at a fundamental level with the stuff of legend (Figure 1).