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Dr Patch Adams
Gesundheit Institute
PO Box 268
Hillsboro, West Virginia
USA 24946

9 July 1998

Dear Patch Adams,

I love your work and where it leads - a sober and considered thought as well as one much influenced by your magic. I was optimistically billed as a Keynote speaker at the start of David Elpern's conference, The Art & Calling, in Williamstown, around Memorial Day. You were the other, and I've been consumed by the experience (and basking in the Association) ever since.

After a 6-week cooling off-period, I am still feeling deprived of the opportunity to give you some feedback. This comes from a layman, fascinated by medicine and professionally preoccupied by some of the very misguided and harmful things it does. I fear especially the power of pharmaceutical companies. Too much of it is inimical to health; it is very seductive and easily abused and it seems that increasingly few have the power to resist it.

I've been banging away at this kind of thing for over 20 years, and I wouldn't describe any of them as under-stimulating. But your 'show' in Williamstown was by far the most inspiring view of health that I've heard in all that time. It was breathtaking, wonderful. Hollywood be damned if Robin Williams doesn't get this across. He's a fine actor - but what a responsibility to try to convey what you are saying and what you want to achieve. If the film isn't being promoted as a promotion of your ideas and ideals, it seems a bad omen. I wonder to what extent the global public is going to get real protein, or carbohydrate spread with fat?

It saddens me that the proceeds of the film won't help to build your visionary hospital but I do hope it will help indirectly, encouraging you to go on doing magnificent things for years to come. I realise healing comes first, but I hope you also recognise the value people put on your reaching and teaching in person. So many people at Williamstown were clearly also bedazzled. It is such a good synthesis: the sometimes gentle, sometimes uproarious celebration of life and health, combined with brisk, potent dismissals of nonsense and vice. Delicious, vital, and very influential stuff.

All this has caused me wonder if it would be a good idea to ask you to come to London, say, to fill the Royal Albert Hall for an evening or two. I wondered if you felt if you could get across to an audience of several thousand (in the round) anything like what you communicated to a group of 100 in Williamstown. I'm not sure. Can it be done? Would you like to try? And how many hours would best suit you? If you think definitely yes, could you suggest some good dates? If we can fix something, your fee and all the profits might be good contributions to the Gesundheit dream.

I'm putting this letter up on our website, also sending copies to people who should know of your work, including one or two influential closet clowns. I hope this might lead to something, if only to some richly deserved donations for your work. With good wishes and very many thanks.

Yours sincerely,
Charles Medawar

 

REPLY RECEIVED: ..."Let's do it"...

 

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