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Concept
Death from laughter
Summary
Death from laughter is a supposedly extremely rare form of death, usually resulting from either cardiac arrest or asphyxiation, that has itself been caused by a fit of laughter. Though uncommon, death by laughter has been recorded from the times of ancient Greece to modern times.
Usually, the phrase "dying from laughter" is used as a hyperbole.
Death may result from several pathologies that deviate from benign laughter. Infarction of the pons and the medulla oblongata in the brain may cause the pseudobulbar affect. Asphyxiation caused by laughter leads the body to shut down from the lack of oxygen.
Laughter can cause atonia and collapse ("agelastic syncope"), which in turn can cause trauma. See also laughter-induced syncope, cataplexy, and Bezold–Jarisch reflex. Gelastic seizures can be due to focal lesions to the hypothalamus. Depending upon the size of the lesion, the emotional lability may be a sign of an acute condition, and not itself the cause of the fatality. Gelastic syncope has also been associated with the cerebellum.
Zeuxis, a 5th-century BC Greek painter, is said to have died laughing at the humorous way in which he painted the goddess Aphrodite – after the old woman who commissioned it insisted on modelling for the portrait.
Chrysippus, also known as "the man who died from laughing at his joke", is a 3rd-century BC Greek Stoic philosopher who died of laughter after he saw a donkey eating his fermented figs; he told a slave to give the donkey undiluted wine to wash them down, and then, "having laughed too much, he died" (Diogenes Laërtius 7.185).
In 1410, King Martin of Aragon died from a combination of indigestion and uncontrollable laughter triggered by a joke told by his favourite court jester.
In 1556, Pietro Aretino "is said to have died of suffocation from laughing too much".
In 1660, Thomas Urquhart, the Scottish aristocrat, polymath, and first translator of François Rabelais' writings into English, is said to have died laughing upon hearing that Charles II had taken the throne.
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