Tanzania 1962: In a girls’ boarding school in Africa, three students suddenly started laughing uncontrollably. Six weeks later, more than half the school had been infected. The school was closed and people were sent back to their towns and villages. Ten days later, another curious thing happened: the laughter broke out again in a village over 55 miles away, where some of the students lived. 100s more were affected. Other outbreaks started over a wide area, until the epidemic peated out over six months. By then, over 1,000 people had been affected, though they all fully recovered. So why did it happen? Some villagers thought it was caused by radiation poisoning, and doctors were called in to investigate. Their findings: mass psychogenic illness. Emotions of all kinds can spread quickly. How you feel depends on how others feel. In fact, even a friends’ friends’ friend can affect you. We’re biologically hardwired to mimic people around us. By copying others’ outward behavior, we also adopt their inner emotions: your friend feels happy. She smiles. So you smile, and you feel happier. Positive emotions like this can fuel an emotional stampede, which can often last longer than a stampede of negative emotions. –Excerpt from the above video, “Laughter Epidemic.” Image: "The three gigglers" by Alan...
A strange thing happened in Tanzania in 1962. At a mission boarding school near Lake Victoria in the Bacoba District, there was an epidemic of laughter. And this was not just a few schoolgirls sharing a joke. An irresistible desire to laugh broke out and spread from person to person until more than one thousand people were affected. The affliction had an abrupt onset, and the initial bout of laugher lasted between a few minutes and a few hours in those affected. This was followed by a period of normal behavior, then typically a few relapses over the course of up to sixteen days. In what was to be a clue about the real nature of this epidemic, the victims often described feeling restless and fearful, despite their laughter. The physicians who first investigated and reported on the outbreak – Dr. Rankin, the faculty member at Makerere University, and Dr. Philip, the medical officer of the Bukoba District – were extremely thorough. They found that each new patient had contact with another person suffering from the malady. They were able to observe that the incubation period between onset of symptoms ranged from a few hours to a few days. Thankfully, as they intoned without irony, “no fatal cases were reported.” Afflicted persons recovered fully. The epidemic began on January 30, 1962, when three girls aged twelve to eighteen started laughing uncontrollably. It spread rapidly, and soon most people at the school had a serious case of giggles. By March 18, ninety five out of the 159 pupils were affected, and the school was forced to close. The pupils went...
