Only in England.

The country that once gave us Gilbert and Sullivan, Evelyn Waugh and Monty Python, has just completed one of the most humorless studies in medical history. The results were announced by Dr. Andrew Steptoe, a professor of psychology (a guarantee of unsmiling gravity, as well as the ability to discern, through research, something that kindergartners know in their bones.)

Prof Steptoe wanted to examine what he calls “the other side of the coin—people who had a positive outlook on life.” Purpose: to see whether they were healthier, lived longer, had better serotonin levels etc.

His breathless study concludes (brass fanfare, drum roll): “Happy people may have better prospects for good health.” He unearthed this breathtaking news by asking some 200 middle-aged men and women to keep journals recording their moods over two days, providing entries 30 times every 24 hours.

He and his staff found that those who were happy had less plasma fibrinogen, a bloodstream chemical that indicates bodily inflammation. In addition, levels of cortisol, a stress hormone, turned out to be 32 percent lower in people who reported more happy moments than their colleagues.

Professor Jane Wardle, who aided in the study, declared (brass fanfare, drum roll): “This research suggests we should aim to maximize the happiness of the population.”

And just how should we do that? The professors don’t say.

One hates to wake them from their torpor, but if they can bestir themselves they can google the name Norman Cousins. The editor of the once-influential Saturday Review was at least 40 years ahead of their curve, and about 400 years behind what Shakespeare knew when he wrote Twelfth Night to supplement his histories and tragedies.  

In 1964 Cousins was stricken with a degenerative spinal illness. Doctors couldn’t offer much aid, so he struck out on his own.  

He tried megadoses of Vitamin C, and they helped a bit. But his real breakthrough came when he rented Marx Brothers films, then available only on celluloid, and when he watched Candid Camera. Cousins then made what was a life-changing discovery: “Ten minutes of genuine belly laughter had an anesthetic effect and would give me at least two hours of pain free sleep.”

His inflammation levels decreased, and soon he was back on the job. “Laughter may or not activate the endorphins or enhance respiration,” he wrote later. “What seems clear, however, is that laughter is an antidote to apprehension and panic.”

That it is, and always has been. Laughter is a tranquilizer with no side effects, a mood booster, a break from the noise and stress of everyday life. Next time Professors Steptoe and Wardle find themselves downcast and chopfallen because columnists deride their announcement of the apparent, they might view DVDs of Chaplin and Keaton shorts. They could then move on—slowly, of course—to Duck Soup or A Night at the Opera. After several such doses, they could attempt experimental samplings of The Bank Dick, starring W. C. Fields and To Be Or Not To Be, starring Jack Benny and Carole Lombard. As for TV, they could get their feet wet by watching reruns of I Love Lucy, inching carefully up to the first five years of Seinfeld. No point in pushing themselves too far, too fast.

The experiment would be risky, perhaps dangerous, but it just …might…work. Who knows? One day they might be enlightened enough to see that their dryasdust work is laughable.