1. Humor
Have you ever heard the phrase, " Laughter is the best medicine?" Surprisingly, that's true, so let me help you discover some of the things laughter can do for you.
Norman Cousins is generally credited with starting the scientific study of humor some 20 years ago. Anatomy of an Illness tells how watching comical movies helped him recover from an illness that was predicted to be fatal. Norman made it his mission to laugh 100 times a day. With this he recovered and taught us about the healing effects of humor.
Medical studies indicate that laughter boosts levels of endorphins, the body's natural painkillers. Studies also show that laughter increases the cells that attack viruses, foreign cells and cancer cells. Plus it decrease your stress level and fights depression. Laughter exercises your heart by raising and lowering your heart rate and blood pressure.
It also makes your lungs stronger and gets your blood flowing going. One doctor says that 20 seconds of hard laughter gives your heart the same workout as 3 minutes of hard rowing. Let us think about this for a moment, you could laugh with friends for 20 seconds or work up a sweat on a rowing machine. Which would you choose?.
Healthcare workers with a sense of humor also benefit from reduced stress and have a better understanding of their patients. Norman Cousins writes in his book about how he would play jokes on his nurses just to get in a good laugh. Laughter benefits both patients and nurses, plus it is fun too.
Now that you know how healthy humor can be, let me share with you why we need more humor in hospitals. Many mental institutes have humor rooms, with comedy carts full of costumes; gag props, closed-circuit comedy television channels, and visits from clowns to increase the use of laughter. This could benefit all of us if we were in the hospital. If you have ever been in a hospital for more than a couple of days you know how depressing it can be.
1 MEDICINE IN THE ANCIENT WORLD In today's society medicine is created by a world of computers and cutting edge technology, but from the roots of medicine merged remedies and treatments that are still used today by many professionals. ... GREEK MEDICINE "The foundation of modern medicine is to be found in the medicine of the Ancient Greeks" (http://junior.apk.net/~fjk/gmed.html). ... A lot of the work Hippocrates did came from Empedocles of Sicily, who was the first to develop the Humor theory. The Humor Theory was the Greek belief that the body consisted of four fluids: phleg...
In the beginning and midway through the 19th century, typical practices of medicine were not at all based on scientific thought or evidence. Many practitioners believed in the idea of humoralism, which was the thought that health resulted from a natural balance of the bodily humors: yellow bile, blood, phlegm, and black bile. ... Johns Hopkins School of Medicine was opened in 1893, under the German trained pathologist William H. ... By making clinical and scientific research a requirement, American medicine would completely adopt scientific concepts for all practitioners. With the introducti...
Medicine was often a risky business. Bloodletting was a popular method of restoring a patient's health and "humors." ... Astrology played a role in health and medicine in the middle Ages. ... These four humors had to be balanced. ... The concept of immunity has been a later development in modern medicine, but it was very deeply studied in all its aspects in Ayurvedic medicine. ...
The area of medicine was also greatly influenced by religion. Much of the early medicine was practice by clergymen and other religious groups. ... Not all of medicine during the medieval times was based on research and facts. ... One of the most popular of these types of ideas is the four humors. ... (Krizywicka 5) As Zurich states in regard to the humors, "Though virtually worthless as a theory, it remained the fundamental prop of European medicine for over two millennia." (1) The humors remained popular in the medical field even though they had little medical value. ...
The Comedy Club The Comedy Club was a presentation by Steve Kent in which it dealt with comedy as a mean of medicine. He called it the medicine of the soul. ... He also dealt with the use of humor to lighten the seriousness of situations. ... I feel that humor is of great importance. ... Teaching us about the effect that humor has; 2. ...
In the Encyclopedia of Ancient Greek Culture, the following is stated about Greek medicine: "Today knowledge of Greek medicine comes largely from the surviving works of medical writers of antiquity, from references in the works of nonmedical writers- (140). ... "The Hippocratics emphasized careful observation and diagnosis" (Greek Medicine, 141). ... On the Nature of Man was a, "famous (but incorrect) theory of the Four Humors" (Greek Medicine, 141). ... Asclepius was the Greek god of Medicine who later was adapted to the Roman Empire. ... "Medicine was bequeathed to the Romans through the ...
Hippocrates seems to have traveled widely in Greece and Asia Minor throughout his career, teaching and practicing medicine. ... Hippocrates also embraced the commonly held belief that disease was caused by an imbalance of the four bodily humors, but he expanded on the theory and maintained that humors were glandular secretions and their imbalance was caused by outside forces. ... Hippocrates' contribution to modern clinical medicine is unrivaled. ... He as affected the modern world with his oath and his practice of medicine. Therefore, Hippocrates helped transform medicine. ...
Muslim scholars did much to advance this knowledge especially in the fields of mathematics and medicine. ... In contrast, some historians of medicine cite evidence that even in the Middle Ages, many people believed mental illness to have its basis in physical and psychological disturbances, such as imbalances in the four bodily humors (blood, black bile, yellow bile, and phlegm), poor diet, and grief (Klienman & Cohen, 1998). ... Medicine was a central part of medieval Islamic culture. Islamic medicine was built on tradition, chiefly the theoretical and practical knowledge developed in Greece ...