There is an old English saying, "Laughter is the best medicine." One person certainly would have agreed with this is Norman Cousins.
Norman Cousins was the editor of a magazine called Saturday Review for almost forty years. He also 1 and spoke about world peace and anti-war issues(反战议题), traveling to many different countries to share his2
In the 1960s, after returning to the United States from a busy and tiring trip toEurope. Mr. Cousins got3. He discovered he had a strange disease that caused great pain in his bones(骨头).
In less than a week after he got back, he could not 4it. Every move that he made was painful. He was not able to5at night. The doctor told Mr. Cousins that they did not know how to cure (治疗)his problem and he might never 6the illness. Mr. Cousins, however , refused to give up hope .
Mr. Cousins thought that the illness could be caused by7thoughts. He did not want to take 8to cure himself. Instead, he felt that happy thoughts or laughter might cure his illness.
He began to experiment on himself while still in the hospital by watching comedy shows on televis ion. Mr. Cousins quickly found that ten minutes of9 laughter during the day gave him two hours of pain-free sleep at night.
Deciding that the10could not help him, Mr. Cousins left the hospital and checked into a hotel room where he could11his experiments with laughter. For eight days, Mr. Cousins12in the hotel room watching comedy shows on television, reading amusing books, and sleeping whenever he felt13. Within three weeks, he felt well enough to take a vacation to Puerto Rico where he began running on the beach for14.
After a few months, Mr. Cousins was15to carry on his work. He had laughed himself back to health.
