Norman Cousins, when he fell seriously ill, did something which his doctors did not think was funny: he checked out of the hospital and into a hotel.

Immediately, he experienced the benefits. Room rates were cheaper, the food was delicious, service was first-class and he was not constantly interrupted in his rest - either by doctors, nurses or fellow patients.   He felt better right away.   

Best of all, he could spend most of the time watching funny movies.  Cousins rented dozens of classic films - Marx Brothers, Laurel & Hardy, Albert & Costello, Charlie Chaplin and more.  This was in the mid 1960s, before the days of video, so he had to rent a movie projector along with the actual films.

It was well worth the hassle.  Cousins laughed so much that he eventually recovered from Ankylosing Spondylitis - an "incurable" degenerative disease that causes the breakdown of collagen, the fibrous tissue that binds together the body's cells.

At the time, Cousins was almost completely paralyzed and his doctors had given him no more than six months to live.  Yet he went on to live another 20-plus years, until 1990.  During that period, he even survived a massive heart attack and, again, recovered through his own, unorthodox ways.

Norman Cousins goes down in history as the man who laughed his way to health.  He tells the story of his amazing recovery in "Anatomy of an Illness".  The book has become famous enough for other authors to pen similar titles such as, Anatomy of the Spirit, Anatomy of Miracles, and so on.

Unfortunately, it is not quite famous enough to still remain in print today, more than 20 years after its first publication in 1978.   If you can find a copy, read it.  You'll enjoy it.  And you will gain much useful insight into the value of laughter and other positive emotions.  You will also learn much about the strength and power of the human spirit.

Cousins was a journalist, not a medicine man.  Yet his book, which started off as an article in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, has played a major role in encouraging the scientific study of the relationship between laughter and healing.

It's funny what you might find on the internet sometimes. Out of curiosity, I did a “Google” seach for myself yesterday (July 12, 2004) and found the above article at a site called Victoria's Verbiage.

I had written the article long ago and published it in my natural health newsletter, The Good Life. Wonder how Victoria found it. She did not directly attribute the article to me, but used it as part of a larger article and listed me as a “reference”.