The long hiccup
.by medical reporter Mary Lawson

It all started with an Indian curry, but it ended in hospital.
For many people the subject of hiccups is a joke, but for Harry Mendis, a fifteen-year-old schoolboy from Birmingham, it was something quite different.
His hiccups began one Sunday lunchtime and continued day and night for two weeks. After the first week, Harry was desperate and his parents took him to hospital, but it took another week for the doctors to cure his attack.
Harry, who is now back at school, described what happened to him.
“I began to hiccup after eating a curry from my local takeaway. I drank a glass of water but that didn’t do any good. That evening I had hiccups every four seconds. We tried everything to stop them. I held my breath and cold drinks. My father even tried to give me a shock but it didn’t work either.”
After a week of sleepless nights, he went to hospital. The doctors took an X-ray of his chest but they couldn’t find anything wrong.
“They gave me some tablets and my hiccups slowed down, but it was another week before the tablets worked completely and my hiccups stopped.”
Harry was very lucky. The world record holder is the unfortunate American farmer Charles Osborne, who hiccupped constantly for sixty-eight years. He eventually stopped in 1990, but nobody knows why.


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