Emotions and Health: Laughter Really Is Good Medicine

That laughter could be used as a medical therapeutic intervention was highly popularized by the story of Norman Cousins, initially published as a case history in JAMA and then later as a biographical book, Anatomy of an Illness.1 Cousins, editor of the Saturday Review and one of America’s best known intellectuals, treated his own his own ankylosing spondylitis using Marx Brothers–induced laughter; his public advocacy for the benefit of laughter was widely noticed. His writing inspired medical researchers in different parts of the world to conduct numerous experiments measuring the physiologic effects and benefits of laughter, some of which will be reviewed in this paper. Though Cousins found watching Marx Brothers movies to be his preferred panacea, Harpo and company are not the research standard for eliciting laughter.