Patch Adams: Healing more important than cure

This may be an old comedy, but its relevance is timeless. The message this film sends across is that love, laughter and affection can go a long distance in healing a person more than the usual doses of medicine. Well, there is a great difference between ‘cure’ and ‘healing’. A physical disease may be cured by the medicines prescribed by the physician. However, there is no guarantee that the person is healed. Healing has to do with the whole person and not just his or her physical ailment. Even a person with multiple physical ailments can be a completely healed person when he/she is completely free from within.

Director: Tom Shadyac

Film Clip

That is where love, laughter and affection come into play. Here is Hunter Adams, nicknamed Patch Adams (Robin Williams) who learns a great lesson that the only way to forget one’s problems is to get involved in the lives of others and bring them happiness and joy. Hence, he makes a life decision to become a doctor so that he can come closer to those suffering and in pain and ‘heal’ them. Of course, the traditionalists at the medical college and hospital where he is studying have a problem. However, Adams pursues his goal with a single-minded devotion to bring about and spread healing.

The film, no doubt, stirs us to think about the present-day medication system which focuses largely on the disease rather than the person. For most doctors, the patient is just another ‘case’ and no more a person. Such treatment can only make the person sicker than bring about healing. The ‘great lesson’ medical students learn in hospitals that they must be detached from their patients and treat them just as cases with diseases, is unfortunate. This way you create doctors who are robots and not human beings.

Great film! Well, Munna Bai MBBS has been inspired by this film.

- Melwyn Pinto SJ