Since then, these trips have been an integral part of Gesundheit´s global outreach. Equipped with colorful clothing and compassion we visited hospitals, orphanages, homes for the elderly as well as just clowning on the street. In 1985, I took a group of people on a clown trip to what was then the Soviet Union. Over the course of the last two decades I´ve been on the road for 200-300 days of the year. I´ve spoken at 90 medical schools in the US and many more around the world. In the last 28 years, I´ve created 50 presentations and performed them in 70 countries. In this context we decided to go public and I quickly became busy as a speaker. In 1984, we realized that we couldn’t continue operating this way. Unfortunately we were so radical that we couldn’t find funding. We did this for 12 years and saw thousands of patients. Our policy was: 1) no charge 2) no health insurance reimbursement 3) no malpractice insurance 4) 3 to 4 hour initial interview with the patient 5) home as hospital 6) integration of all the healing arts 7) integration of medicine with performance arts, arts and crafts, nature, agriculture, education, recreation and social service 8) the health of the staff is as important as the health of the patient. We were always open for any kind of problem. With an amazing group of friends we created the Gesundheit Institute, a pilot hospital model, which we operated for twelve years out of our communal home. Together we had two sons, Atomic and Lars. She was instrumental in the early years of the hospital´s functioning and I cannot imagine it without her. I met my wife, Linda, in my last year of medical school (Medical College of Virginia, class of 1971). I wrote it up in a paper in March, 1971 and this was the basis of what became the Gesundheit Institute. In my imagination I envisioned a communal eco-village hospital that would address every problem of the way healthcare was delivered in one model. I became interested in whole systems thinking, looking for ways to integrate it with the hospital-community concepts that emerged in medical school. I needed to understand so I could create solutions. In order to become an instrument for peace, justice and care I read thousands of books. Second, I set out to quench my thirst for knowledge by studying everything I could get my hands on. I started clowning in public and have done it daily since. I left the hospital on fire and pursued a couple interests while working for my medical degree.įirst, I wanted to go out and engage the world as this happy soul. At 18, I found my desire to serve humanity through medicine and made the commitment to myself to never have another bad day. Everything changed in the last hospitalization when I decided that instead of taking my life, I would make a (love) revolution. In my late teens I was hospitalized three times because I didn’t want to live in a world of so much violence and injustice. I got in trouble with my classmates and was beaten up for standing up to the racism that surrounded me. She was a schoolteacher and fed me all of my interests, giving me self-esteem and making me a creative, loving man who cared for people.Īfter my father´s death we moved back to Virginia and I was placed in an all white school where I immediately was confronted with the ugliness of segregation. He was so damaged by his war experiences that he couldn’t connect with me. Our last seven years with him were in Germany where he died in 1961. We grew up on army bases, outside the US during peacetime and stateside during wartime. Dads career was in the army and he fought all of World War II and Korea. My older brother and I were World War II babies.
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