Publisher's Synopsis
Excerpt from The Humorous Speaker: A Book of Humorous Selections for Reading and Speaking
Court history we read that a crown was paid to one who had succeeded in making the king, Edward II., laugh - a medicine which was doubtless more valu able and efficacious than a dozen prescriptions from the pharmacopmia. A hearty laugh is medicinal and remedial, and Hippocrates believed and de clared that a physician should possess a ready humor as a part of the equipment for healing, and Galen informs us that Esculapius himself wrote comedies and commanded them to be read to his patients for the promotion of a healthful circula tion of the blood. A noted physician of Richmond, Virginia, Dr. Robert Coleman, whose success was eminent, was said to have accomplished as many cures by his' wit and humor as by the drugs he pre scribed. His entrance into a sick-chamber brought an atmosphere of cheerfulness, which assisted the receptivity of the patient, and, to quote the homely comparison of Mother Hubbard's dog, many a friend who left a sick one with the thought that nothing more was needed but a coffin, returned to find him laughing and on the highway to recovery. The world is not without illustrious examples and advocates of the excellence and benefit of a hearty laugh. The emperor Titus insisted that he had lost a day if he had passed it without laughing, and Chamfort was accustomed to tell his friends that the most utterly useless and lost of all days was the one upon which he had not laughed.
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