But his genius was forbidding these chefs to cook for patients. Hippocrates reasoned that bad food was intrinsically funny. In other words, the illness itself was not funny, so let the patient complain of bad food as a means of humorous expression. It was a cosmic joke that patients appreciated. This medical humor legacy survives in most hospitals today.
Medical humor is an under-studied and researched area of medicine.
More research is needed into the roots of medical humor as this area of medicine now becomes essential to survival in daily practice.