"Laughter is the best medicine"?

Question

Who said it?

Answer 1

Apparently it was God (or whoever wrote Proverbs).
Proverbs 17:22: "A merry heart doeth good like a medicine, but a broken spirit drieth the bones."


Quoting from DearShrink.com:

You can look forever in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, The Columbia World of Quotations, and Simpson's Contemporary Quotations, and you won't find the answer. Why is that? Because the quote does not exist. "Laughter, the Best Medicine" is actually a Reader's Digest Magazine column that has been around almost as long as the magazine has existed. However, it is rumored that Reader's Digest stole the phrase from God or whoever it was who wrote the Book of Proverbs.

Answer 2

I don't know if he coined the phrase, but Norman Cousins first mainstreamed the concept when he wrote a book and other treatises about how he battled a terminal illness through non-stop exposure to laughter. For instance he supposedly watched every The Three Stooges movie he could get his hands on.

Answer 3

I do not know who said it, but I do know it is true!

Answer 4

you