Patch Adams
American physician, activist, diplomat and author · United States · On the map · Doctors · Born 1945 · age 81
The doctor who prescribes laughter. Patch Adams built a practice around the idea that humor heals as surely as medicine does, and spent decades dressing as a clown to prove it.
Patch Adams is read about 923 times a day, in 23 languages.
A typical day, 30 days to 9 November 2026
The middle day of the days counted, so one week of news cannot move it. The line under it is the last 400 days, one point a day.
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Hunter Doherty Adams was born May 28, 1945, and grew into a physician who couldn't separate care from comedy. In 1989 he founded the Gesundheit! Institute, a not-for-profit that operates outside the insurance system and treats healing as something bigger than a pill or a chart. Each year he organizes volunteers from around the world to travel to orphanages and hospitals in clown costume, carrying humor where it's needed most. He's currently based in Urbana, Illinois, still promoting a model of health care that puts the person before the policy.
