There is an old English saying, “Laughter is the best medicine.” One person who certainly would have agreed with this is Norman Cousins.

Norman Cousins was the editor of a magazine called Saturday Review for almost forty years. He also _______ and spoke about world peace and anti-war issues, traveling to many different countries to share his _______.

In the 1960s, after returning to the United States from a busy and tiring trip to Europe, Mr. Cousins got _______. He discovered he had a strange disease that caused great pain in his bones.

In less than a week after he got back, he could not _______ it. Every move that he made was painful. He was not able to _______ at night. The doctor told Mr. Cousins that they did not know how to cure his problem and he might never _______ the illness. Mr. Cousins, however, refused to give up hope.

Mr. Cousins thought that the illness could be caused by _______ thoughts. He did not want to take _______ to cure himself. Instead, he felt that happy thoughts or laughter might cure his illness.

He began to experiment on himself while still in the hospital by watching comedy shows on television. Mr. Cousins quickly found that ten minutes of _______ laughter during the day gave him two hours of pain-free sleep at night.

Deciding that the ________ could not help him, Mr. Cousins left the hospital and checked into a hotel room where he could ________ his experiments with laughter. For eight days, Mr. Cousins ________in the hotel room watching comedy shows on television, reading amusing books, and sleeping whenever he felt ________. Within three weeks, he felt well enough to take a vacation to Puerto Rico where he began running on the beach for ________.

After a few months, Mr. Cousins was ________ to carry on his work. He had laughed himself back to health.

Missy was an energetic nine-year-old girl. She loved school and sports. ________, things changed. Missy began to feel tired all the time. Something wasn’t right, so her parents took Missy to hospital. It wasn’t long before they heard the news — Missy ________ cancer. “We live in rural Queensland and we had to get on a plane that day to get to Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital so Missy could start ________. We have two other daughters, so my husband had to stay behind at home with them. It was really ________,” said Anj, Missy’s mother.

From the moment she began treatment, Missy was unwell. “She didn’t ________ her hospital room for three months ________,” explained Anj. “We almost ________ her twice due to complications (并发症). At one point her immunity (免疫) was ________ and she was sent to a separate room.”

“I was really ________,” said Missy. “It was painful and I really wanted to bed with my family. I felt sick and I couldn’t walk for a few weeks. I needed ________ just to do basic things like going to the toilet.”

Thankfully, Missy’s treatment was ________. On the 13th of December, she was able to ring the ________ chemotherapy (化疗) bell in hospital, ________ the end of her treatment. Missy still has to have ________ checks, but she is much better. That’s why, when she grows up, Missy wants to be a researcher to ________ a cure for cancer.