Publisher's Preface
Foreword
Author's Acknowledgments
Co-Author's Preface
Introduction
Part I Bringing Your Vision and Joy to the Practice of
Medicine
1 A Health Care System in Pain
2 An Ideal Medical Practice
3 Humor and Healing, or Why We're Building a Silly
Hospital
4 Art, Nature, and Imagination
5 Rebuilding Self, Family, Community, World
Huge - What Happens to a Dream Unleashed
Part II A Prescription for Health and Healing
A Chronology of the Gesundheit Institute
6 The Pilot Period
7 The Dream Defined
8 Garth's Story, By Gareth Branwyn
9 Organizing Dreamers, by Blair Voyvodic, M.D.
10 Building the Dream
11 Living on the Land, by Kathy Blomquist
12 Light a Candle: How Can I Help?
13 Passion and Persistence
14 Five Years Have Passed
Bibliography: A Booklover's Search for Understanding and
Ideas
Index
Patch Adams, M.D., is a social revolutionary and one-man show who believes in "horse and buggy" medicine and never charges his patients a cent! In 1971, the author and a few of his colleagues founded the Gesundheit institute in Northern Virginia. During the next twelve years, they operated a home-based family medical practice and managed to treat more than 15,000 people without payment, malpractice insurance, or formal facilities. Patch Adams continues on his life mission to achieve the goal of building a fully functioning, free health care center.
The Universal movie soon to be released as "Patch Adams" starring
Robin Williams was born as a book called "Gesundheit!" published by
a small Vermont house and written by a doctor who dresses as a
clown, doesn't charge his patients and told the architect designing
his new health center in West Virginia to "make it silly," with
trap doors, eyeball-shaped exam rooms and chandeliers to swing on.
How did such a project find its way to print? And how did it get to
Universal?
According to publisher Ehud Sperling, who started Inner Traditions
23 years ago and is just now enjoying his first Hollywood sale,
"Gesundheit!" was written at the suggestion of one Josh Mailman of
the philanthropic Mailman family from New York, who met Patch Adams
at an ersatz-hippie celebration called the Rainbow Gathering.
Mailman thought people would want to read about this 6-foot, 5-inch
ponytailed man who called himself "a pie in the face of the
American medical establishment"--his goal is free medical care for
all--and how he came to hold his unorthodox views. Mailman
introduced Adams to Sperling, who found him a coauthor, Maureen
Mylander, and a book was born. That was in 1983.
The movie deal took place at least 10 years later, at a meeting of
the hip entrepreneur invitation-only Social Ventures Network, where
Sperling and Mailman met up by chance with "M*A*S*H" co-star Mike
Farrell, who had heard of Patch Adams at the time of
"Gesundheit!'s" publication. Farrell wanted to produce the project.
He optioned the book via Al Zuckerman's Writer's House for what
Zuckerman characterizes now as a steal, made a pitch to Universal
and secured the interest of comedy director Mike Shadyac ("Liar,
Liar"). "Everyone wanted Williams," reports Sperling, "because it
was an ideal vehicle for him, but no one wanted to get their hopes
up."
But the clown in Adams appealed to Williams. What about the height
discrepancy? "Williams is shorter, but he's very funny," Sperling
says. There has been talk at Universal of donating a portion of the
box office to Patch Adam's Gesundheit Institute, which is more than
$4 million short of the $5 million needed to finish work on the
grounds and building, but according to Sperling, nothing has
happened yet on that front.
*LOS ANGELES TIMES Sunday November 1, 1998*
"Patch Adams's book ought to be required reading for patients,
doctors, and ordinary mortals of all kinds. It will help us
rediscover the true meaning of medical care, and it will help to
heal the health care system itself. I have learned from Patch the
courage it takes to be different and to reveal your wounds: behind
his clownlike persona lies a great deal of wisdom, and it often
falls to the court jester to speak the truth that those in power
need to hear."
*Bernie Siegel, M.D., author of Love, Medicine and Miracles*
"At last Patch Adams, M.D. has put on paper his vision of
patient-centered health care . . . a vision that has inspired so
many over the years. Patch's 'crazy dream' is, in reality, the root
of what good health care should be all about and too often isn't.
Any health care professional who reads Gesundheit! will come away
with a renewed sense of mission and joy about what they do."
*Rick Wade, Senior Vice President, The American Hospital
Association*
"If a wacky West Virginia doctor's dream of building a freehospital
comes true, he'll have a small Vermont publishing house to
thank."
*Olivia F. Gentile, Rutland Herald*
"This book is an enjoyable, easy read that's ideal for those
interested in a new view of health."
*New Times, Oct 2005*
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