In unani system of medicine which based on hippocratic humoral theory, has humoral basis of disease. Person will be healthy when these four humour will be in a balance. Its disbalance cause many diseases. Therefore abnormality of humour is suplemented by drug to treat any disease.

Dear Shafat,

Helas an RG editor edited my question - her/his activity was directed to eliminate the picture attached to the question.

Had you seen the picture (which I have inserted below again) it would be obvious that I'm not speaking about hippocratean humors, but about having fun, jocularity, jest in a hospital or in a clinic settlement - in order to alleviate some of the symptoms of our patients. The consequent mirth may have a lot of beneficial effects related to endorphin release, cardiovascular and respiratory function and strong antidepressant role.

However, the situation has to be cautiously prepared: a stupid joke can have disastruous side-effects. That is why would be interesting how other specialists are dealing with this issue.

Regards,

András

the joking doctor

PS: the laughing guy below is not the same as the author of this post

Every person with good humor have better quality of life and good humor is contagious facilitating the interaction between doctor and patient. The type of humor to be employed will vary with the patient profile and the physician is able to identify this characteristic of the patient

Exercise nr.1.

Good morning.

We will examine today the signs of dysmetria.

You will have to extend your arms, then alternatively point the tip of your indexfinger on the tip of your nose.

Go...Excellent...

Now close your eyes and continue...

Now show me who's gonna get well tomorrow? Don't stop, continue...

Usually a smile is obtained.

Well, it's not the laugh depicted in the precedent post, but it's good for a start.

Every healing process starts with a smile.

Scene nr 2.

Sometime the doctor needs the stress-drain

- Good morning, Doc!

- Oh! Hello again, Mrs... What's your complaint today?

After twenty minutes of anamnesis and a thorough physical exam I reached the diagnosis. Overlap syndrome: 10% sorethroat + 90% hypochondria.

- Ma'm, you came in the last moment!

- Really? - asks the lady electrified - Is it so serious?

- No, Ma'm. Your symptoms would have been spontaneously ceased, should you wait till tomorrow. Now, let me see, what can be done about it...

Humor is made of joy-particles called joyons, which are spreading like waves.

You can never know exactly the whereabouts of a joyon: if you try to pin it down for examination, it simply disappears and reappears instantly at an other location. That is the uncertainty principle in humor.

So, it is not a surprise that humor is quantized.

It is very important to recognize the appropiate quantas of humor which can be administered by a helth-care professional to an ill person in order to reach a replenishment of joyons needed to start the healing process.

Usually the patients arrives in an unexcited, basic state, depleted of its joyons.

One quanta of humor will help him to reach the first orbital, manifested by a smirk or smile (a voluntary and controllable movement of the corners of the mouth towards the homolateral ears). In the case of smile the endorphin-release is evoked.

Two quanta of humor put the patient on the second – still easily controllable – orbital, characterized by some sound-emission originating in the upper airways: snicker and giggles.

Three quanta leads to the third orbital: the sounds emitted are originating deep from the lung and are accompanied by extension and bending of the torso, the extension of the head. The chuckle and laugh depicted in the second post (as the picture was edited out by an RG Editorfrom the Question's box) are charcterized by contagiousness: it is enough to see a laughing person and you start smiling. That equals with one quanta of humor, so the laws of conservation are not valid in case of humor...

Four quanta of humor can drive the recipient in an unstable condition. Unvoluntary movements can appear: feet stomp, thighs slapped, epiphora, deep and loud sound is emitted.

Five quanta of humor drives the victim in a dangerous condition, when side-effects may appear. The condition, also called “die laughing” is characterized by the patient’s collapse or fall out of the chair, followed by convulsions, accompanied by difficulty in breathing and loosing sphincterial control. Such an overdose should be avoided in order to prevent malpraxis and laundry-bills claims.

Nina,

I appreciate very much your post.

It is very important to discuss and understand the mechanisms of coping with stress of health-care professionals “behind the closed doors”. As a person which spends a lot of his worktime in ER and formed as a surgery resident in the Operating Theatre, stress is like butter on bread for me. I don’t like it, but I have to live with it day and night. There are two strategies to survive a stressful situation: competition or cooperation. The first involves agression ( to be better than your colleague, collaborator, etc) the second involves reciprocal backing-up. Had the chance to know both.

There are workplaces where competition prevails. Everyone monitorizes their colleagues for errors in applying the procedures, everything is videotaped and microphones are installed. Work-related stress is internalized and released somewhere else. Usually on families.

There are workplaces where cooperation prevails. Stress is released here mainly through humor, behind closed doors between the health-professionals, observing (as much as possible) the dignity of the person which is mocked. Which can be a person from the High Management of the hospital (usually not worthing the care for their dignity), a young resident (at least when I was young resident, that situation occurred very often), some good-looking nurse (taking the risks of sexual harrasement – which were never takad so seriously) – but the rule is that there are no exceptions when it comes to the subject of jokes. The result is that this joking and mocking team can be released from stress, focused on the task during the intervention – and no stress is piled up at the end. And the team-leader has to be prepared to give the humorous cue after a difficult intervention in order to dissolve stress – that makes that team a cooperative one. The opposite are of the competitive teams, where scores are counted after each intervention. Guess, which is my team?

So, humor is a very serious thing: lifes can be saved through humor in emergency rooms and caretaker’s families beyond.

Humor/ laughs will for sure enhance the well being of individuals. Patients with psychological problems such as mild depression etc can benefit. Having said that having a control group is crucial. For control groups you should control for SES, depression diagnosis, personalities etc.

Of course humor-therapy is great. In the Pirogov Emergency Medicine Hospital in Sofia, Bulgaria, there is a team of comic actors visiting patients. This is the so-called "laughter clinic". In my opinion children with traumatic injuries benefit very much from their performances.

Humor is expression of positive energy and good functioning of resilience. We think that work should be done helping patients to find out their resilient capability to overcome difficulties and solve their problems. In cardiology primary and secondary prevention this contributes to balance the psychobehavioural situations and push patients to accept the disease and improve their conditions. Expecially in cardiac rehabilitation where we have tested this kind of support the results are positive. What I think is that dealing with these aspects any program, due to its complexity, should be well organized and should have a multifactor approaches and multispecialistic involvement (we use the heart team). In this sense humor is an indicator of increasing positive motivation and hence of good result.

Humor is an essential human need! For any person in suffer a good joke is always welcomed! I believe irony and sarcasm have no place in patient - doctor interaction although sometimes I have noticed that high educated patients have a curious sense of black humor!

I would recommend a book about laughter therapy. They was written by Przemysław Grzybowski. They have been translated into foreign languages​​.

I am happy to see the question regarding humor. I want to add u that in India, there is three indigenous syatem of medicine, in which one system recognised by the Government is Unani System of Medicine. And this Unani system is based on this humrous theory. And we will be happy to satisfy your questions regarding this humour. Some researchera are laughing with with humor. But we can explain u the four types of temperament individual having. 

One more thing we will add u that, most of the classical text having detail illustration on humour.