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On May 20, the court jester of the medical profession will bring his zany medicine show to the Gay Street Theater in Washington.
Dr. Hunter B. (Patch) Adams believes that many of the problems afflicting patients are rooted in emotional distress, and for them, the cure is joy. “The best therapy is being happy,” he says. "All the other things doctors can do — acupuncture, surgery, homeopathy — are, at best, aids.”
And so he tours the country dressed as a snake-oil salesman, dispensing “elixirs of life" and enticing audiences to laughter. He has 325 rubber noses that he dons — sometime several at a time — with the regalia of a circus clown, complete to huge floppy shoes.
On stage, he swigs the elixirs with dramatic flair to demonstrate their effects. He swallows the elixir of faith and expounds on the relationship between faith and healing. He takes a mouthful of the elixir of exercise and declares: “Few elixirs give such positive results with regular use.” With a volunteer from the audience holding the other end of a white rope, he demonstrates proper tooth flossing on his two assistants dressed as bicuspids. “Now if you’re new to this, it may take two to six weeks of bleeding gums,” he warns, “before flossing . . . becomes .. . your life!”
His is often the same advice you get from your dentist or your regular physician, but when it comes from Patch, it’s dressed in humor and it penetrates. Watch him prance around the stage with the bicuspids and you remember to floss; listen to him preach on the perils of processed food and you find yourself filling the grocery cart at the produce section.
Despite the trappings of a clown, this is a real doctor, with a mission and a message.
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