Death from laughter

Chrysippus reportedly died of laughter

Records of the cases of death from laughter date back to Ancient Greece.

Pathophysiology

Death may result from several pathologies that deviate from benign laughter.

Infarction of the pons and medulla oblongata in the brain may cause pathological laughter.

Laughter can cause atonia and collapse ("gelastic syncope"), which in turn can cause trauma. See also laughter-induced syncope, Bezold-Jarisch reflex.

Gelastic seizures can be due to focal lesions to the hypothalamus Depending upon the size of the lesion, the emotional lability may be a sign of an acute condition, and not itself the cause of the fatality. Gelastic syncope has also been associated with the cerebellum.

Historical deaths attributed to laughter

• In the third century B.C. the Greek stoic philosopher Chrysippus died of laughter after giving his donkey wine, then seeing it attempt to feed on figs.
• Martin I of Aragon died from a lethal combination of indigestion and uncontrollable laughing in 1410.
• Pietro Aretino "is said to have died of suffocation from laughing too much."
• It is cited that the Burmese king Nanda Bayin, in 1599 "laughed to death when informed, by a visiting Italian merchant, that Venice was a free state without a king."
• In 1660, the Scottish aristocrat, polymath and first translator of Rabelais into English, Thomas Urquhart, is said to have died laughing upon hearing that Charles II had taken the throne.

Modern deaths attributed to laughter

• On 24 March 1975, Alex Mitchell, a 50-year-old bricklayer from King's Lynn, England, had died laughing while watching the Kung Fu Kapers episode of The Goodies, featuring a Scotsman in a kilt battling a vicious black pudding with his bagpipes. After twenty-five minutes of continuous laughter Mr. Mitchell finally slumped on the sofa and expired from heart failure. His widow later sent the Goodies a letter thanking them for making Mr. Mitchell's final moments of life so pleasant.
• In 1989, a Danish audiologist, Ole Bentzen, died watching A Fish Called Wanda. His heart was estimated to have beat at between 250 and 500 beats per minute, before he succumbed to cardiac arrest.
• In 2003, Damnoen Saen-um, a Thai ice cream salesman, is reported to have died while laughing in his sleep at the age of 52. His wife was unable to wake him, and he stopped breathing after two minutes of continuous laughter. He was believed to have died either of heart failure or asphyxiation.

In popular culture

• In Robert Zemeckis's 1988 movie Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the weasels hired to catch the titular character have to be reminded repeatedly - sometimes violently - not to laugh, at the risk of dying from laughter. This eventually proves prophetic, as protagonist Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) is able to kill them all with an elaborate comic routine during the film's climax .
• The Batman villain The Joker sometimes uses gas or poisons which induces his victims to laugh to death.
• In the film Mary Poppins the president of the bank, Mr Dawes Sr, dies while laughing hysterically at a joke told by Mr Banks.
• In the first episode of the television series Monty Python's Flying Circus in 1969 and in the 1971 film "And Now For Something Completely Different" there is a sketch entitled "The Funniest Joke In The World" in which a humorist writes a joke so funny that he and everyone else who reads it laughs themselves to death. It is eventually translated into German and used as a weapon against the Nazis with devastating effect. It is stated that the joke is worked on one word at a time to prevent the translators from dying themselves. One man "accidentally saw two words of the joke, and spent the next six weeks in the hospital." The Germans retaliate with a "V-Joke" but it fails to have any effect. After peace breaks out and the war ends, joke warfare is banned by the Geneva Convention.
• A character in the novel The Westing Game tells a story of a wise man who predicts the day of his own death. As midnight approaches, the man realizes that he has survived the day and begins to laugh. Finally, at one minute before midnight, he dies laughing.
• In South Park episode Scott Tenorman Must Die, Kenny McCormick laughs himself to death after seeing the I'm A Little Piggy video.
• In the film The Tune it depicts the Lovesick Hotel where all the guests are there to commit suicide. One of the rooms is the "Laugh Yourself to Death" room, where someone is shown dieing from laughter watching a clown hit himself in the face with a fish.
• On an episode of 1000 Ways to Die one of the deaths portrays a man obsessed with jokes being told a joke that triggers a 36 hour attack of uncontrollable laughter, eventually having a cardiac arrest.

See also

• Kuru (disease), also known as "laughing sickness".
• Tickle torture

External links

• Snopes.com article