Hiccup - Society and Culture

Society and Culture

There are many superstitious and folk remedies for hiccups which can often be bizzare, suggestions like the person with hiccups Headstanding, drinking a glass of water upside-down, or being frightened by someone are just a few.

American Charles Osborne had hiccups for 68 years, from 1922 to February 1990, and was entered in the Guinness World Records as the man with the longest attack of hiccups an estimated 430 million hiccups later. In 2007, Florida teenager Jennifer Mee gained media fame for hiccuping around 50 times per minute for more than five weeks; she was given the nickname "Hiccup Girl". Briton Christopher Sands had hiccupped an estimated 10 million times in a 15-month period from February 2007 to May 2009 which were eventually discovered to be due to a tumor on his brain stem had been pushing on nerves, causing him to hiccup every two seconds, 12 hours a day, an affliction that meant that he could hardly eat or sleep and finally stopped in 2009 following brain surgery.

In Slavic, Baltic and Hungarian folklore, it is said that hiccups occur when the person experiencing them is being talked about by someone not present. Hiccups in Indian and Arabic folklore are similarly said to occur when the person experiencing them is being thought of by somebody close.