An injury in 1922 triggered the Iowa man's intractable hiccups, which abruptly stopped in 1990. Kevern Koskovich recalls walking through his hometown of Anthon, Iowa, as a boy and conversing with a nice resident who liked sitting on a bench at a major street junction.
The man, named Charles Osborne, had an unique way of speaking that was aimed to hide the sound of his incessant hiccupping, recounts Koskovich, now 73. He'd gotten a lot of practice: Osborne had been hiccuping continually since an injury on June 13, 1922. The illness endured for more than six decades, finally coming to an end in 1990, 68 years after it began. Guinness World Records confirms Osborne's predicament as the longest assault of hiccups.
Osborne, who was born in 1893, began hiccupping following an incident involving a hog. The young man was working on a farm in Union, Nebraska, at the time.
In 1982, Osborne told People magazine, "I was hanging a 350-pound hog for butchering." "I took it up and then collapsed." I felt nothing, but the doctor later told me that I had ruptured a blood vessel in my brain the size of a pin."
Osborne reported 20 to 40 involuntary diaphragm spasms each minute on average. He hiccupped an estimated 430 million times before dying in May 1991 at the age of 97.
Despite traveling considerable distances to see a variety of doctors, none were able to find a cure for Osborne. According to the Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Argus Leader, a Mayo Clinic physician managed to stop the hiccups by administering carbon monoxide and oxygen, but the procedure had a (literally) fatal flaw: Osborne couldn't safely take in the dangerous gas. Instead, he had to settle for learning a breathing technique that reduced the characteristic "hic" sound created by the abrupt closing of the vocal cords following an involuntary contraction. Osborne breathed in between hiccups to suppress the noise.
"He'd flex his chest three or four times a minute," says Koskovich, who knew one of Osborne's sons and now lives in Correctionville, Iowa. "You could tell he was hiccupping, but he didn't make a sound." He heaved—that's the perfect word for it."
Osborne, according to Koskovich, was a cheery, fun-loving guy who didn't talk about his illness and enjoyed fooling around with people. "What the hell's going on?" Osborne frequently asked acquaintances.
"He was a character," adds Koskovich, whose wife, Kate, serves on the board of the Rural Woodbury County Historical Society.
According to Ali Seifi, a neurosurgeon at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio who devised a gadget that rapidly reduces hiccups, Osborne received a slight rib damage in the 1922 accident. Lower ribs are connected to the diaphragm, a muscle between the chest and abdomen that contracts to cause hiccups. The constant hiccupping could have been caused by a damaged diaphragm.
According to Seifi, another option is that Osborne injured his head and suffered a stroke. According to Diana Greene-Chandos, a neurologist at Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center, sudden, painful hiccups can be an indication of a stroke, especially when combined with symptoms like chest discomfort and disorientation.
In 1978, Osborne, who had been hiccupping for 56 years, told the Associated Press (AP) that he'd "give all I had in the world if I could get rid of them." "I don't know what it would be like not to have them," he continued. I get so sore jerking all the time."
Osborne's mishaps gained national attention around the time of the AP interview. He was in the Guinness Book of World Records and appeared on "The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson" on the reality show "That's Incredible." (At the start of his illness, in 1936, Osborne appeared on Robert Ripley's "Believe It or Not" radio show.) The notoriety resulted in thousands of responses from sympathetic viewers, many of whom proposed their own cures for the hiccups. None, though, provided more than a temporary reprieve.
Osborne enjoyed a relatively regular existence, all things considered. "Charles Osborne has not merely survived; he has prospered," noted Sioux City Journal columnist Bob Davis in 1984. He had eight children from two marriages. (When Smithsonian magazine approached family members, they declined to be interviewed for this feature.) He made a living by selling farm machinery and livestock at auction.
Beginning in the early 1970s, Osborne had to blend his meals: "I've worn out two Osterizers," he bemoaned to People in 1982. Despite this, he managed to maintain his weight by combining chicken, dressing, broth, and milk for lunch and then followed it up with many drinks.
Osborne's hiccups eventually ended in 1990 for mysterious reasons. He died in May 1991, about a year later, after what must have been a delightfully hiccup-free few months.
Ananya Gupta
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