I remember saying to someone who was really making me laugh, "Stop it! You're killing me." Little did I know that one can literally die of laughing. While trying out a new search engine, Omnity, I typed in "humor." Among the typical citings, there were a number of linked sites about people dying of laughter. Here is the story of one. His name is Chrysippus. He was a Greek Stoic philosopher born circa 279 B.C.E.
Now according to a number of reliable sources (that is journalistic for "blame it on the other person.") He was the head of the Stoic School of Hellenistic philosophy in Athens. Here is the irony. According to the Merriman-Webster Dictionary a Stoic is "a member of a school of philosophy...holding that the wise man should be free from passion, unmoved by joy or grief" Oops! Apparently Chrysippus did not follow his own philosophy.
It seems that one day Chrysippus' donkey began eating his figs. According to the philosophy student who documented Chrysippus' death, Chrysippus then commanded his slave to, “give the donkey neat wine to drink with which to wash them down.” Apparently our Stoic philosopher found the sight to be quite funny . The student noted that “Having laughed too much, he died.”
According to modern medical experts, Chrysippus died from cardiac arrest brought about by asphyxiation. The asphyxiation was caused by his intense laughter. Not very Stoic!
No comments:
Post a Comment