The Laughing Epidemic That Made People Laugh To Death

by NwanyiAbia
A+A-
Reset

While the coronavirus pandemic is ongoing, it is important to note that there are other epidemics that have come and gone, The weirdest of all (but serious) is the laughing epidemic. It is an epidemic that one of its symptoms was laughter. Imagine laughing hysterically and uncontrollably, and anyone who comes close to you gets infected. This epidemic lasted for one year and six months. Ignore all the myths about this epidemic and understand that the physiology of laughter is such that no one can laugh for more than about 20 seconds because laughing is such a strain on respiration. You know when you laugh for so long that it starts to hurt? You just can’t do it for that long. So it is impossible for an entire population to laugh for a year because it’s impossible for one person to laugh for more than a minute.

US Election: I Will Continue To Stand With Trump – FFK 

It started in a little boarding school in the village of Kashasha in what is now Tanzania, Africa. There was an initial event of laughter by a small group of students, possibly due to a joke. Eventually, the whole school was affected by the laughter by contagion. People take this at face value. One person laughs, then another person laughs, then it spreads like an avalanche. So when parents picked up their children from school, they started laughing. Then it spread to other villages, and so on. 

People were showing anxiety-related symptoms, from pain to fainting, to respiratory problems, and sometimes people get rashes. There were attacks of crying as well as laughing. Uncontrollable laughter was just a symptom of the epidemic. 

You Are A Laughing Stock To Northern APC Members – Adeyanju To Tinubu   

Advertisement

The epidemic itself was called mass hysteria. This is when a certain behavior is observed in a group of people that is not related to a certain environmental stimulus. There is no specific cause.

Now we call it Mass Psychogenic Illness (MPI). It’s psychogenic, meaning it is all in the minds of the people who showed the symptoms. It’s not caused by an element in the environment, like food poisoning or a toxin. There is an underlying shared stress factor in the population. It usually occurs in a group of people who don’t have a lot of power. 

Today it is popularly called the laughing epidemic, it is however unknown how many persons were affected and how many persons died from it because there was very limited documentation at the time. 

Post Disclaimer

The opinions, beliefs and viewpoints expressed by the author and forum participants on this website do not necessarily reflect the opinions, beliefs and viewpoints of Anaedo Online or official policies of the Anaedo Online.

You may also like

Advertisement