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JAMA. 1970;212(10):1697-1698.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

In the undefined Good Old Days, a quality known as the "bedside manner" was held to be important to the success of a physician. Then, the good doctor was knowing, sensitive, and, perhaps above all, good-humored. Time, in its march, has heeled good humor in deference to the advances of knowledge, including the important "know-how." But what of the "know-why"?

Freud, in prying open the Pandora's-box-mind, concluded that humor and wit were means to release inhibited emotions, including (of course) sexual desires. A content analysis of today's communications' media—TV, Playboy, the theater, the picket's placard, WC graffiti—would substantiate the viewpoint that today's humor alludes to underlying emotional charge, although the latency thereof may be seen to be changing to "uncovered."

That humor has a high place in this modern time is obvious: economic precedents have been set by such fare as "The Tonight Show," wherein the stimulus-seeking (or fatigued?) viewer . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

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