Medical humor is the ability to make light of serious subjects in order to promote better patient care. It is a delicate balance between making a topic accessible and mocking it. There are three approaches to delivering medical humor: self-deprecating, other-enhancing, and self-enhancing. This article explores some of the theory behind this type of humor and offers some guidelines for achieving this goal.

Humoral theory

Humoralism, the medical theory that the body is a microcosm of the universe, continued to flourish in both ancient and modern medicine. It was an enduring philosophy that was applied to mental illness until the mid-19th century. However, by the early 20th century it had lost much of its explanatory power.

Hippocrates, a Greek physician from the 5th century BCE, first formulated a humoral theory. He emphasized the importance of keeping the human body in balance. The theory also explained the human temperament.

In ancient … Read more