Norman Cousins' Laughing Cure

New Yorker cartoons and a little Buddhism to boot

The Laughing Buddha

Norman Cousins was a political and literary journalist, but he may have been best-known for the “laughing cure” that he credited with saving his life in the face of a dire health situation. In 1964 he was diagnosed with a rare disease affecting the connective tissues of the body, as well as with Ankylosing Spondylitis, a type of crip…