Patch Adams

Hunter Doherty "Patch" Adams (born May 28, 1945) who had a difficult childhood. In 1961, his father, an officer in the United States Army had fought in Korea and died while stationed in Germany. After his father's death, Adams returned to the United States with his mother and brother. Upon his return, Adams has stated that he encountered institutional injustice which made him a target for bullies at school. As a result, Adams was unhappy and became actively suicidal. After being hospitalized three times in one year for wanting to end his life, he decided "You don't kill yourself; You make (love) revolution."

A 1998 comedy-drama film Patch Adams directed by Tom Shadyac is the fact-based story of Hunter "Patch" Adams, an unconventional physician who attempted to heal patients with laughter, based on his own book and mixing equal doses of scatological humor and pathos.

In 1969, Hunter Adams (Robin Williams) is a troubled man who voluntarily commits himself into a mental institution. His experiences there convince Adams to become a doctor and two years later, he enrolls at Virginia Medical University being the oldest first year student, where he is appalled at the cold, clinical professionalism that alienates patients from their caregivers. Determined to provide emotional and spiritual relief as well as medicine, Adams clowns around for his patients, getting to know them personally. Although his efforts seem to work wonders and the hospital nursing staff is grateful for the levity Adams provides, his methods alienate his uptight roommate Mitch Roman (Philip Seymour Hoffman) as well as the staff and faculty of his school. Adams perseveres, however, even starting his own low-cost rural clinic called the Gesundheit Institute and wooing a pretty fellow student, Carin Fisher (Monica Potter). Tragedy strikes and Adams' career is put in jeopardy, forcing him to defend his style and philosophy before a board of jurists determined to bar him from practicing medicine.

In real life, Adams attended George Washington University and graduating brilliantly in 1967. He received his recognition as a doctor from the Medical College of Virginia (MCV) in 1971 and thereafter, he founded the Gesundheit Institute, a non-profit organization that is working towards building and sustaining the first FREE hospital in the United States.

Adams and Linda Edquist (who he met in MCV and she volunteered in the clinic) married in 1975 and divorced in 1998. They had two sons, Atomic Zagnut "Zag" Adams and Lars Zig Edquist Adams. In the late 1960s, one of his closest friends (a man and not a woman as depicted in the film) was murdered. As a speaker, now he travels around the globe lecturing about his medicine methods - good health is a laughing matter.

Life, Stormy says, 

is not about how fast you run or even with what degree of grace. 

It's about perseverance,

about staying on your feet and slogging forward no matter what.

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