EIGHT HOURS' LAUGHTER.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXX, Issue 8436, 7 May 1907, Page 3

EIGHT HOURS' LAUGHTER.

New York newspapers (according to the Telegraph) are recording the extraordinary case of a young girl, Miss Barry, of Florence, New Jersey, a member of the local Baptist Church choir, who laughed, giggled and hiccoughed immoderately for eight hours, being utterly unable to restrain herself, and at the end of that time was so weak and distressed by hysteria that grave fears for her life were entertained. Two doctors attended her, and they worked hard all the time to restore her normal state. A venerable joke was the cause of the mischief. The girl was at a dentist's and had a tooth extracted. At the end of the operation the patient said: "What a blessing it would be to be born without teeth." "But," said the dentist, "we are, you know. " It was 2 p.m. on Tuesday when this jest was sprung, and immediately Miss Barry began to giggle, the giggles rapidly increasing in strength. After she had laughed for five minutes the man who told the joke looked hurt, but it was no joke then to Miss Barry. All kinds of remedies, we informed, were tried. They threw water in her face, put keys down her back, endeavoured to make her angry by insults, but still she laughed. "I wish we were born without teeth," she would say, and then her laughter would ring out again.