Because of issues of life, death, suffering, and the mortal body, the medical profession is a fertile arena for humor that serves to address these topics. The Medical Carnivalesque studies such medical humor among physicians.

Suggesting that laughter and suffering connect to form part of a broader phenomenon called the medical carnivalesque, author Lisa Gabbert explores humor as a fundamental way of coping with core philosophical and existential issues that physicians regularly engage with. Featuring topics such as the institutionalized nature of physician suffering, death-related humor, humor about patient bodies, and humor about medical specialties, this ethnography of the evolution of medical humor shows us how the culture of contemporary medicine addresses the painful and transgressive aspects of the work.

The Medical Carnivalesque shows us that suffering is an essential component of life, and humor in medicine emerges because of extraordinarily difficult work environments that induce suffering of the physicians themselves.