Laughter Epidemic

We are inclined to laugh when we are in the presence of someone else who is laughing or even when we listen to canned laughter.

Just how infectious laughter is was illustrated by an episode in 1962 in a girls’ boarding school, where, for a period of six weeks, the school was forced to close. It began with three girls who were stricken with bouts of uncontrolled laughter for hours on end. Eventually nearly half the 159 school boarders were affected, laughing for up to 16 days at a time.

The school was closed and the children sent home but this resulted in further spread of the condition throughout communities and to other schools. Attempts to reopen the school were disastrous.

In the two-year period that the gelastic epidemic lasted, 14 boarding schools and entire villages and towns were affected.

Laughter under such circumstances is no laughing matter.