Man who made death laugh.....
It happened over thirty years ago. A journalist full of strength and energy, the chief editor of Seturday Revue, Norman Cousins, suddenly felt ill. His temperature rose sharply, he got sick all over. His health quickly deteriorated, and after a week he became difficult to move, turn his neck, raise his arms. He had to go to the hospital and was soon diagnosed. It turned out that in Norman collagenosis is an autoimmune disease affecting the entire body, in which the immune system shows aggression to its own connective tissue.
Day by day, Cousins’s body became more and more immobile, with great difficulty he moved his arms and legs, turned over in bed. The moment came when he could not open his jaws to eat a little. Fear, longing, resentment at the injustice of fate embraced him. Cousins stopped talking to even close people and spent whole days turning away from the wall of the hospital ward. The attending physician, Dr. Hitzig, supported Norman as best he could, attracting the best specialists for consultation, but the disease progressed. And then Norman asked the doctor about his chances for recovery. The answer shook him: out of five hundred patients with collagenosis, only one is recovering.
The night after this conversation Norman did not sleep. Until now, doctors took care of me, he thought, and did everything they could, but that did not help. If I want to stay alive, I have to act myself. And since doctors and medicines are powerless before my illness, I must find another way of healing. He recalled the words of Dr. Hitzig that the body is mobilized to fight any disease if its endocrine system is working at full capacity. And fear, despondency, prolonged depression, according to the observations of scientists, on the contrary, inhibit the activity of the endocrine system. In response to these negative emotions, the adrenal glands secrete stress hormones - adrenaline and norepinephrine, which enter the bloodstream and spread throughout the body. When there are too many of them, they act destructively on the body.
Reflections led Norman Cousins to an obvious thought: if negative emotions, oppressing the endocrine system, are “provocateurs” of diseases, then positive emotions, activating its activity, can become “stimulators” of recovery. Moreover, each person has a very simple and affordable means of healing - laughter.
A cheerful heart is beneficial as healing, and a dull spirit dries the bones ”- this phrase from the Bible instilled hope in Cousins. He took up the works of famous physicians and scientists and quickly discovered what he was looking for. It turns out that many doctors and thinkers attached high priority to positive emotions. The physician R. Barton, who lived in the 17th century, described his observations in the book Anatomy of Melancholia: “Laughter cleanses the blood, rejuvenates the body, helps with heart ailments”. Barton argued that laughter carries a cure for all diseases.
Immanuel Kant in his writings emphasized that laughter activates all vital processes in the body.
Sigmund Freud called humor a unique manifestation of the human psyche, and laughter - a no less unique means of treatment.
A modern American scientist, W. Frey, empirically proved that laughter has a beneficial effect on the blood vessels and the heart, on the blood formation and breathing processes, and also on the overall muscle tone of the body. That pleasant muscular pain, which appears after an attack of uncontrollable laughter, it would be very helpful to experience daily.
Scientists have found: under the action of laughter in the brain secretes a substance similar to morphine. It becomes a kind of internal "anesthesia", helps the body to relax and at the same time mobilize forces to fight the disease.
Acquainted with all the available literature on the effects of emotions on health, Cousins decided that if he wanted to stay alive, he had no right to continue in the role of a person passively awaiting his own death. He is simply obliged to mobilize all the reserves of his mind and body with the help of laughter. That was not easy. When you lie motionless, bedridden, and every joint aches with pain - there’s no time for laughing. But Cousins had already begun to take shape.
Despite the protests of doctors who considered him a “hopeless patient,” Cousins discharged from the hospital and moved to a hotel room, where nothing reminded him of his illness. Only Dr. Hitzig, who became a close friend of him, remained with him. He approved the idea of Cousins to use laughter to activate all biochemical reactions in the body. A movie projector was delivered to the hotel room, as well as the best comic films and books.
Cousins felt incredibly happy when ten minutes of let the forced laugh still gave an anesthetic effect, which allowed him to sleep for two hours without pain.
After the analgesic effect of laughter was over, the nurse again turned on the film projector or read Cassus's humorous stories. This went on for several days. Terrible pains stopped torturing Cousins. The anesthetic effect of laughter has been proven. Next, it was necessary to find out whether laughter could have the same beneficial effect on the endocrine system, due to which the autoimmune inflammatory process could be reduced. To establish this, Dr. Hitzig took blood tests from Cousins just before and after the laugh. And each time the test results confirmed that the inflammatory process in the body was declining. Cousins felt winged, the old saying: “Laughter is the best medicine” acquired a physiological basis.
In the meantime, the laugh therapy program has unfolded in full force. Cousins laughed a day at least six hours. His eyes were swollen from tears, but these were tears of recovery. Doses of anti-inflammatory drugs decreased, and over time he completely stopped taking medications, including sleeping pills - sleep returned to him.
A month later, Cousins was able to move his fingers for the first time without pain. He could not believe his eyes: the thickenings and nodes on the body began to decrease. A month later, he was able to actively move in bed, and it was a wonderful feeling! The moment came when the patient got out of bed. True, for many more months he could not raise his hand enough to get a book from the top shelf. My knees were still trembling, and my legs were shaky while walking. But he was already so recovered from the disease that he could return to work. That alone was a real miracle for Cousins!
Month by month, the mobility of all joints increased. The pain disappeared, there were only discomfort in the knees and one shoulder. His fingers were moving more confidently along the keys of the organ — and he was again able to perform his favorite Bach fugues. He began to play tennis. Riding on a horse, not afraid to fall. He freely turned his neck in all directions - contrary to the forecasts of specialists about the complete immobility of his spine.
Ten years later, Cousins accidentally met one of the doctors who sentenced him to stillness, to a slow death. He was completely taken aback by seeing Cousins alive and well. Greeting, Norman squeezed the doctor's hand with such force that he grimaced in pain. The strength of this handshake was more eloquent than any words.