Laughter therapy, assisted by humanist ideologies, has become a massive cultural industry. This article traces the cultural origins of the idea of medicinal laughter in the eighteenth century, addressing the ways in which physiological discourse shaped an emergent cultural paradigm. In such system, ＂animal economy＂ laid a foundation for conceiving laughter in terms of bodily movement and circulation that were believed to promote physical and mental health. On this basis, laughter as therapy sought a smooth translation from personal health to social health. In this sense, it can be seen as a solution to the problems of comedy, transforming the waste and chaos in it into resources of mirth, while complex political texts of social conflict were sidestepped. In this way, laughter's status as a self-referential commodity was established in the literary and cultural market. This article reads The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy and The Expedition of Humphry Clinker to investigate the ironies and conundrums of such discourses in the medium of literary language.