Related commentaries – Attitude

Exhortations For Holy Living – I Thessalonians 5:16 – 5:22

Laughter is Like a Medicine

Norman Cousins tells of being hospitalized with a rare, crippling disease. When he was diagnosed as incurable, Cousins checked out of the hospital. Aware of the harmful effects that negative emotions can have on the body, Cousins reasoned the reverse was true. So he borrowed a movie projector and prescribed his own treatment, consisting of old “Candid Camera” reruns. It didn’t take long for him to discover that 10 minutes of laughter provided two hours of pain free sleep. Amazingly, his debilitating disease was eventually reversed. After his story appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine, Cousins received more than 3000 letters from appreciative physicians throughout the world. (Today in the Word, MBI, 12-18-91).