I love trivia, but frankly, who doesn’t? Trivia occupies the mind, makes you feel smarter than you really are, and sometimes leads your mind down totally different paths than you first started out on. For example, it was almost 94 years ago that the longest attack of hiccups ever recorded began and — SURPRISE! — that record is held by an American. A farmer from Anthon, Iowa to be exact.
Charles Osborne (December 14, 1893 – May 1, 1991) hiccupped continuously for 68 years from June 13, 1922 1922 to 1990 at a rate of some 40 hiccups per minute every hour of every day. Osborne hiccupped a total of roughly 430 million times during his lifetime. Yet he led a surprisingly normal life; holding a variety of jobs, including farm machinery salesman and cattle-and-hog auctioneer, married twice and fathered eight children.
Back in 1922 Osborne caught the hiccups while weighing a hog. In a March 1982 interview with People magazine Osborne recalled, “I was hanging a 350-pound hog for butchering,” he said. “I picked it up and then I fell down. I felt nothing, but the doctor said later that I busted a blood vessel the size of a pin in my brain.” The result, according to Osborne’s doctor, is that “he destroyed a small area in the brain stem that inhibits the hiccup response.”
In his younger days, Osborne traveled as far as Alaska seeking medical advice, but he gave up on a cure because of the expense involved and lack of results. While awake, Osborne managed to suppress most of the noise by breathing between hiccups, a technique he learned in the early 1950s from doctors at the Mayo Clinic. During sleep the hiccups subsided. Although chronic hiccups have been known to cause severe weight loss and in rare cases death due to exhaustion, the 5’4” Osborne kept his weight steady at 145 pounds his entire adult life.
Osborne estimated that he received over 4,000 letters offering home remedies and “sure fire” hiccup cures over the years, but none of them ever worked. In 1978, Osborne went hiccup-free for a day and a half during experimental hormone therapy which affected the breathing center in the nervous system. The treatments stopped and the hiccups soon returned. The scientific explanation for hiccups is “an involuntary spasmodic contraction of the diaphragm which causes an intake of breath that is suddenly checked by the closing of the larynx, which produces the characteristic sound.” Those “diaphragm contractions” are triggered by the nervous system’s response to increased abdominal pressure, usually from eating too fast, too much spicy food, alcohol or even laughing.
In his golden years, Osborne was forced to grind all of his food in a blender before eating it in order to slip it past the hiccups to reach his stomach. This caused his hiccups to go from 40-per-minute to a more relaxed 20-per-minute. Charles’s hiccups inexplicably stopped when he was 96. But he didn’t get to enjoy a hiccup-free life for long. Osborne died of complications from ulcers in Sioux City, Iowa on May 1, 1991, less than a year after his hiccups stopped.
Osborne’s hiccup affliction certainly brought him notoriety, but it also brought him a measure of fame. He is recognized by the Guinness World Records book as the man with the longest “attack” of the hiccups. Charlie’s condition landed him guest appearances on the New York radio show “Ripley’s Believe It or Not!” in 1936, ABC’s “That’s Incredible!” in 1980, and “The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson” in 1983. He appeared in the “Dear Abby” advice column, was drawn as a comic for a “Bazooka Joe” bubble gum wrapper, is listed as a trivia question on the iPod Touch and was featured as a question in the board game “Trivial Pursuit.”
The causes for hiccups might actually rival the cures. Most believe that the biggest cause of hiccups is eating too fast, while others cite factors such as stress, tickling, smoking, rapid change in body temperature, upset stomach or poor eating habits as possible causes. What cannot be denied is that hiccups are a random annoyance that usually end as quickly and mysteriously as they began for most people. The suggested cures for the hiccups could fill a bookshelf by themselves, although most home remedies involve breathing or drinking water. There are countless Web pages devoted to the mysterious phenomenon and even a Facebook page called “Cures for hiccups.” Cures include everything from massaging the fingers, to sucking on lollipops, to pressing the right side of the chin.
Some of the suggested cures seem simple; laugh, swallow air, make yourself cough or sneeze, take three to five of the deepest breaths you can, stand on your head, breathe through a wet washcloth, count to twenty with your fingers in your ears, apply pressure to your forehead just above your eyes, gargle, take a hot bath or shower, breathe slowly and deeply into your shirt, balance something on your nose, drink three big gulps of cold water, hold your breath for as long as you can or simply tell yourself “I’m not going to hiccup again.”
Some cures are obvious derivations from superstitions and old wives tales; Let a tablespoon of sugar held between your tongue and the roof of your mouth dissolve, close your eyes and gently rub your ear lobe until the hiccups are gone, hold your tongue with your thumb and index finger and gently pull it forward, light a match, blow it out, then put the tip in a cup of water (sulfur in the match calms the throat) and drink the water after dousing the match or pinch your nose shut while you drink a cup of water.
Some cures are attributed to homeopathic drugs; dill weed, alcohol-free extract of catnip and fennel, ructus Aurantii (fruit of Citrus aurantium L., family Rutaceae), Quercus e glandibus (remedy derived from acorns), Magnesia phosphoricum, drink Alka Selzer in water, Pepto-Bismol Chewables (take two, cherry-flavored), and my personal favorite, a shot of bourbon followed by several forced burps. There are even a couple of Milwaukee doctors who insist that smoking marijuana will cure the hiccups.
Some cures involve eating or drinking something out of the ordinary; Eat kim-chee, drink vinegar, eat a popsicle, swallow dry bread, eat a dill pickle or drink pickle juice, chew on crushed ice, eat a marshmallow, chew on mint leaves, swallow a hot pepper or a spoonful of mustard, drink a shot of lemon or lime juice, swallow a teaspoon of sugar or two tablespoons of honey, drink milk and eat peanut butter,
Some of the cures border on the ridiculous; Sing loud and with heart, scream as long and loud as you can, blow on your thumb like you are blowing up a balloon, drink a carbonated soda and burp as long and as loud as you can, say the word “pineapple” over and over, repeatedly tell yourself “you are not a fish,” breathe through a wet washcloth, smell the fumes from a lighted candle, hang upside down on your bed and let the blood rush to your head, or do three cartwheels with a sour Jolly Rancher candy in your mouth.
Some of the cures are complicated; Lie down flat on the floor, press both fists against your stomach (parallel to each other, so that each fist touches each wrist), and breath deeply, hold your arms out like a cross; breathe in as deeply as you can; bring your hands together in front of you as slowly as possible; once your hands touch, breathe out completely, as slowly as possible; take a slow breath in, with your mouth close to a stream of water flowing from a tap, use a narrow object (like a straw or pencil) to flick the water towards your mouth as fast as possible while drinking (in small gulps) as much of the water as possible or fill a plastic cup with water and place it on a table at around waist level; put your thumbs on your earlobes, bend down and pick up the cup by the rim with your pinkies; stand up straight, drink the entire glass, and put it back down.
Some suggested cures sound painful; Hyperventilate, make yourself vomit, as soon as possible after the first hiccup, rap yourself sharply on the solar plexus (a few times in a row if necessary) with the side of your balled fist, take a finger full of hair from the crown of your head and pull as hard as you can stand for 10 seconds, pinch the back of your shoulder until it hurts (this works because the nerves in your shoulder and the nerves that control your diaphragm come from the same place), acupuncture, slide a well-greased length of thin, flexible rubber tubing through one nostril to the point where it just barely touches the back of the throat (be careful not to hurt the sensitive lining of the nose), touch your uvula gently with the handle of a spoon (breathe steadily to keep from gagging), immerse your face in ice water, spray ethyl chloride along the sternomastoid muscles on both sides (what?) and lastly, jump out of a plane, which seems a bit impractical.
Some medical professionals theorize that hiccups evolved in man’s ancestors and other mammals as a means of causing regurgitation. They swallowed meat at the site of a kill and regurgitated it when they returned to their communities. Vomiting terminates hiccups by stimulating nerve endings at the back of the mouth. Hiccups serve no function in adult humans today, they may be beneficial for fetuses and infants, helping them move food up or down their still-developing digestive tracts. In other words, hiccups are an unnecessary anatomical relic from our caveman days.
Building on that regurgitation theory, many doctors believe that the best single remedy for hiccups is a combination of several popular ones: drinking water and lemon juice or vinegar from the far side of a glass. This forces the tongue down, more effectively exposing the back of the mouth to the tart liquid. Holding one’s breath to cure hiccups is considered to be strictly minor league and the numerous other suggested cures are easily dismissed by doctors with: “Most cures are cures simply because the person’s hiccup clock is over.”
There are an estimated 1,000 chronic hiccupers’ walking in the footsteps of Charles Osborne today in the United States. Who knows, maybe one of them will end up breaking Osborne’s 68-year record someday. As for me, regardless of what the doctors say, holding my breath still works just fine.
Al Hunter is the author of the “Haunted Indianapolis” and co-author of the “Haunted Irvington” and “Indiana National Road” book series. His newest book is “Bumps in the Night. Stories from the Weekly View.” Contact Al directly at Huntvault@aol.com or become a friend on Facebook.
