And here we find ourselves face to face with the question: What truth is there in the saying that laughter has beneficial physiological effects? A curious chapter might be written on the views propounded, both by the light-hearted reveller and the grave and philosophic onlooker, on the wholesomeness of this form of “bodily exercise”. Only a bare reference to this aspect of the subject can, however, be given here. To begin with, the unlearned, who know nothing of diaphragms or of congested veins needing to be relieved, have had a shrewd conviction that laughter sets the current of life moving briskly. Proverbs, such as “laugh and grow fat,” attest this common conviction. Those who have catered to the laughter-lovers have not unnaturally made much of this salutary influence. The mediæval writers of the laughable story in verse (the “fabliau” or “Conte à rire en vers”) held firmly to the belief in the “sanitary virtue” (“vertu saine”) of a burst of laughter. This popular view has been supported by the weight of learned authority. Vocal exercises, of which laughing is clearly one, have been recommended by experts from the time of Aristotle as a means of strengthening the lungs and of furthering the health of the organism as a whole. By many, moreover, laughter has been specifically inculcated as a hygienic measure. The learned Burton (_b._ 1577) quotes a number of physicians in favour of the ancient custom of enlivening the feast with mirth and jokes.[18] The reader may find references to the salutary effects of laughter in the latest text-books of physiology. Both by a vigorous reinforcement of the actions of the large muscles which do the work of respiration, and, still more, by the beneficial effects of these reinforced actions on the functions of the {35} lungs and the circulatory apparatus, laughter properly finds a place among “bodily exercises”.[19] The beneficial effects of laughter have not been overlooked by the pedagogue. Mulcaster, for example (born about 1530), gives a high place to laughing among his “physical” or health-giving exercises. The physiological reasons adduced are sometimes funny enough: for the author relies on Galen and the doctrine of “spirits”. He thinks that laughter will help those who have cold hands and cold chests and are troubled with melancholia, since it “moveth much aire in the breast, and sendeth the warmer spirites outward”. Tickling under the armpits may well be added, seeing that these parts have a great store of small veins and little arteries “which being tickled so become warme themselves, and from thence disperse heat throughout the whole bodie”.[20]