Humor (medicine)

“ She laughed with her whole body and soul, and burst the abscess, and was well.
Humor, if genuine (and if not, it is not humor) , is the very flavor of the spirit, its rich and fragrant ozmazome—having in its aroma something of everything in the man, his expressed juice; wit is but the laughing flower of the intellect or the turn of speech, and is often what we call a “gum-flower,” and looks well when dry. ”

“ Laughter accelerates the respiration, and gives warmth and glow to the whole system. It brightens the eye, increases the perspiration, expands the chest, forces the poisoned air from the least-used lung cells, and tends to restore that exquisite poise or balance which we call health, which results from the harmonious action of all the functions of the body. This delicate poise, which may be destroyed by a sleepless night, a piece of bad news, by grief or anxiety, is often wholly restored by a good hearty laugh. ”

“ Others again use vulgar and trifling Medicines, and yet recover their health, tho’ late, thinking that this happened by the use of their Medicine, when nevertheless the length of time, and the sparingness of their meat and drink, during their illness, whence the superfluous pravity of humours hath gradually wasted, hath effected this; which also sometimes happens to those who take no Physick; but by how much the greater the pravity of the humours is, by so much the longer it will be before Nature will be able without help to overcome and expel them. ”

“ But when we consider that the higher animals can compare objects and make selections, exercise a memory [Pg 12] and have association of ideas concerning each other and the outer world, we come near to that human quality which is the ground of the function of laughter. These mental traits are the buried roots of the consciousness which blossoms into smiles in the sun of wit and humor. ”

“ Moreover, let me tell my young doctor friends, that a cheerful face, and step, and neckcloth, and button-hole, and an occasional hearty and kindly joke, a power of executing and setting agoing a good laugh, are stock in our trade not to be despised. The merry heart does good like a medicine. Your pompous man, and your selfish man, don’t laugh much, or care for laughter; it discomposes the fixed grandeur of the one, and has little room in the heart of the other, who is literally self-contained. My Edinburgh readers will recall many excellent jokes of their doctors—“Lang Sandie Wood,” Dr. ”

“ These helps of bettering nature, are within her lowest and middle region of Diet and Medicine.”
A sensible woman of the Doctor's acquaintance, (the mother of a young family) entered so far into his views upon this subject, that she taught her children from their earliest childhood to consider ill-humour as a disorder which was to be cured by physic. ”

“ If you were to ask a learned physician to explain to you the peculiar sensation termed laughter, it is more than likely he would astonish you with an amazing profundity of erudition, ending in the sage conclusion that he knows nothing more about the matter than that it is a very natural emotion of the senses, generally originating with a good joke, and not unfrequently terminating in a fit of indigestion. ”

“ If the thrush bursts into song on the bare bush at evening, if the child smiles to see the bulging hairy cactus, there must be, I think, something joyful and smiling at the heart, the inmost cell of nature, loving beauty and laughter; indeed, beauty and mirth must be the natural signs of health and content. And then there strike in upon the mind two thoughts. Is, perhaps, the basis of humour a kind of selfish security? Does one primarily laugh at all that is odd, grotesque, broken, ill at ease, fantastic, because such things heighten the sense of one's own health and security? ”

“ As with every instinct, moreover, the laughing process may, and occasionally does, become perverted, as in the laughter of cynicism and contempt, and in the abnormal laughter of the overwrought—itself, however, the modern medical psychologist assures us, a medium of relief from an unbearable strain. ”

“ The physician tells us of the physical benefits of laughing. There is not the remotest corner or little inlet of the minute blood-vessels of the human body that does not feel some wavelet from the convulsion occasioned by good hearty laughter. ”

“ Laughter has a wonderfully beneficial influence on bodily functions—a fact recognized centuries ago when the wise man said, "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine." Laughter is a potent stimulant to all the helpful bodily functions. It hastens digestion, stimulates circulatory reaction, promotes tissue changes, enhances glandular activity, facilitates elimination, and altogether radiates a most beneficent influence throughout the body. ”

“ The folly of the clown caused laughter, promoted genial humor which increased the flow of all the digestive juices and thus contributed to good digestion and perfect assimilation. The uncheerful father or mother who sits down to the table like a thundercloud and suppresses the bright, happy exuberance of childhood ought to be taken down to the dentist and pumped full of laughing-gas until he or she would laugh for a week. ”

“ I don't suppose you knew I had a built-in sense of humor, did you? Of course that laugh was manufactured, inasmuch as I have no diaphragm, per se. But a sense of humor is actually an intellectual attribute, even if you do express it physically. It is not so? ”

“ To be truly successful in the use of pathos he must give a reasonable foundation for the emotion he wishes to evoke, and then be able to turn the aroused feeling into some channel which will justify the pain caused.
Humor is intimately associated with pathos by the law of opposites. One is almost the direct reaction from the other, and after one has been evoked the other follows more easily than it would at another time. ”

“ Among the many pathetic scenes connected with the work of relief were others that illustrated the saving sense of humor which keeps people from going insane in times of great calamity and mental stress. ”

“ The faculty of humor was given man to ease him over the jolts, to oil the bearings of life’s machinery; but ill health often crushes out the sense of humor, and makes life, which was intended to be bright and cheerful, sad and gloomy. Loss of good red blood corpuscles has much to do with one’s sense of humor as well as one’s manners and disposition. The man in poor health is in no condition to appreciate the joys of life. ”

“ We hear so much about the sanitary qualities of laughter, we have been taught so seriously the gospel of amusement, that any writer, preacher, or lecturer, whose smile is broad enough to be infectious, finds himself a prophet in the market-place. Laughter, we are told, freshens our exhausted spirits and disposes us to good-will,—which is true. It is also true that laughter quiets our uneasy scruples and disposes us to simple savagery. Whatever we laugh at, we condone, and the echo of man's malicious merriment rings pitilessly through the centuries. ”

“ So they seek escape from themselves; they try to kill time; reading, playing and going to entertainments. In fact, most of our reading is actuated by the play spirit, and is an effort to obtain excitement through the lives of others.
Humor [1] is a form of pleasure seeking and giving, but depends on a certain technique, the object of which is to elicit the laugh or its equivalent. The laugh is a discharge of tension, and while usually it accompanies pleasure, it may indicate the tension of embarrassment or even complex emotional states. ”

“ The patient may tell you he has a humor in the blood, or scrofulous diathesis. But his parents must have believed that before him, or some of his progenitors must have transmitted that thought, for mind, not matter, formed that conclusion and its results. You will have humors just as long as you believe them safety-valves, or something inherited or superinduced by matter instead of mind. A corrupt mind is made manifest by a corrupt body. ”

“ The pleasurable sensations, which occasion laughter, are perpetually passing into the bounds of pain; for pleasure and pain are often produced by different degrees of the same stimulus; as warmth, light, aromatic or volatile odours, become painful by their excess; and the tickling on the soles of the feet in children is a painful sensation at the very time it produces laughter. When the pleasurable ideas, which excite us to laugh, pass into pain, we use some exertion, as a scream, to relieve the pain, but soon stop it again, as we are unwilling to lose the pleasure ”

“ Humor is a mental faculty which tends to discover incongruous resemblances between things which essentially differ, or essential differences between things put forth as the same, the result being internal mirth or an outburst of laughter. Wit does so likewise, but the two are different. Humor has deep human sympathy, and loves men while raising a laugh against their weaknesses. ”

“ The physiological effects of the mechanical and mental processes involved in laughing are not generally understood and appreciated. The "laugh cure" is a reality, for it is a remedy of very great value. ”

“ This emotion, however, more frequently arises from an unexpected disappointment of the mind, while its attention is arrested by an object apparently of great importance; but suddenly terminating in ridicule, or insignificance.—With respect to its influence on the body, moderate laughter is very beneficial; for it contributes to promote the circulation of the blood through the lungs, and has frequently removed colics, pains in the stomach, and similar complaints. ”

“ The different kinds of moisture in man’s body, reckoned by the old physicians to be phlegm, blood, choler and melancholy, which as they predominate are supposed to determine the temper of mind. (3) General turn or temper of mind. (4) Present disposition. (5) Grotesque imagery, jocularity, merriment. (6) Tendency to disease, morbid disposition. (7) Petulance, peevishness. (8) A trick, a practice. (9) Caprice, whim, predominant inclination.” The list was not quite complete, even in Dr Johnson’s own time. Humour was then, as it is now, the name of the semi-fluid parts of the eye. ”

“ Most persons must have observed the effects which cheerfulness in a medical man has on his patients. The good-natured, jolly doctor, who tells a story now and then, and cracks a joke and has occasionally a hearty laugh with you, or at you, about something or nothing, will do you much more good, other things being equal, than the grave, staid, sombre practitioner, who thinks it almost a sin to smile, especially at the sick-bed or in the sick-room.
I think story telling, as an art, should be cultivated, were it only for its good effects in sickness. ”

“ To begin with, we will try to avoid the error of those who in their subtle disquisitions on the comic idea forgot that laughter is a bodily act, and not fear to allude to such unmetaphysical entities as lung and diaphragm, where they seem to be a central fact in the situation. A careful examination of the very peculiar behaviour of our respiratory and other organs when the feeling of the comic seizes us, seems to belong to a scientific investigation of the subject. ”

“ I use it to indicate the impervious condition of consciousness formed in any attentive state, the strength of the surface tension being in direct proportion to the intensity of attention.) The function of the humor stimulus consists in cutting the surface tension, in taking the hide off of consciousness as it were, and in breaking up in part only its organization, which is at once followed by the humor feeling—the next link in the conscious chain. The principal elements in the humor process consist (1) of the perception of the stimulus, (2) the sense of freedom, (3) its recognition. ”

“ In addition to the immediate physiologic effects which result from laughter it is highly beneficial, by relieving the brain and nervous system from the intense strain and tension of the daily affairs and occupations of life, and gives relief to the severely congested capillaries, which otherwise involve considerable risk to the individual. ”

“ The proneness of man to laughter is modified by age, sex, training, mental state, health, and by many other factors. Healthy, happy children are especially prone to laughter, while disease, strong emotions, fatigue, and age diminish laughter. Women laugh more than do men. The healthy, happy maturing young woman perhaps laughs most, especially when she is slightly embarrassed. What causes laughter? Good news, high spirits, tickling, hearing and seeing others laugh ”

“ The pain, into which this pleasure rises, which would excite the scream of laughter, has been felt forcibly by every one; when they have been under such circumstances, as have induced them to restrain it by a counter-volition; till at length the increased associate motions produce so much pain as to overcome the counter-volition, and the patient bursts out into indecent laughter, contrary to his will in the common acceptation of that word. ”

“ Facial expression has been given us as a means of assisting communication, and smiles and laughter have become the distinctive manifestations of humour. Thus the electric spark passes from one to another, and the flashing eye and wreathed lip lights up the world. Profit also accrues—fear of being laughed at leads us to avoid numerous small errors, and by laughing at others we are enabled to detect shortcomings in ourselves. ”

“ There is good philosophy in the saying, "Laugh and grow fat." If everybody knew the power of laughter as a health tonic and life prolonger the tinge of sadness which now clouds the American face would largely [Pg 8] disappear, and many physicians would find their occupation gone.
The power of laughter was given us to serve a wise purpose in our economy. It is Nature's device for exercising the internal organs and giving us pleasure at the same time. ”