OREM — Flatulence. Doo-doo. Huge underwear.
Those were the kinds of alternative medicine Dr. Hunter "Patch" Adams was prescribing for Prozac-prone America during a speech at Utah Valley State College on Thursday.
"I can tell you that the only thing funny in every culture all over the world . . . (is) farting," Adams said.
Adams said he knows that for a fact, based on his numerous experiments in many elevators around the world.
That was just one of the amusing anecdotes Adams used to keep his audience in stitches with laughter. Adams said tossing gobs of rubber poop in a crowded hallway makes for "amazing choreography" and he demonstrated his own set of colorful oversized underwear to illustrate another humorous observation.
Adams — who rose to national fame following the release of the movie "Patch Adams" starring comic Robin Williams — spoke to a crowd of about 300 people.
With half of his long hair dyed blue and wearing a fork earring in his left ear, Adams had the audience rolling with laughter as he sported various clown outfits and related humorous anecdotes.
Adams sprinkled the speech with seriouspolitical statements, showed clips of suffering children from around the world and explained his philosophy of joy.
"His humor opened our eyes to what's out there in the world," said UVSC student Clarissa Cartwright, 27. "I just want to go out there and do more."
Adams also offered some insights on the events portrayed in the movie that focused on his unorthodox approach to medicine as a doctor.
"The movie was gross understatement of what really happened," Adam said.
Adams said the opening scene, in which Williams portrays Adams as a 30-year-old residing in a mental hospital, was actually a synthesis of the three stays he had at a mental hospital over the course of one year when he was 17 and 18 years old.
He said it was during that turbulent time that he made the decision to be a doctor and "to be happy, all day long, for the rest of my life . . . that's why I'm horrible to be around when you're miserable."
He said he has "clowned" everyday since the age of 18, which explains why for 25 years of his life he has worn only clown costumes.
"Whoever you met in your life that was happy, they made it that way," Adams said.
In 1971, Adams founded the Gesundheit! Institute, then a six-bedroom house that staffed 20 physicians and assistants, and housed 40 patients. During its first 12 years of operation, the institute took care of 500 to 1,000 people a month.
Now, Gesundheit! Institute volunteers travel the world to spread the art of healing through humor and love. The main facility is based in West Virginia, but Adams said is gathering money for a full-scale "silly hospital" that he hopes to build one day.
The philosophy of the Gesundheit! is helping "people find their own vitality," and that is why the clinic uses all kinds of healing arts — arts, recreation, acupuncture, humor — to promote its mission, Adams said.
"It is like Monty Python took over," Adams said.
"That's what health is about — loving life, your life." Adams said. "We're going to be extinct by the next century if we don't move from a value system based on money and power over to compassion and generosity."
UVSC student Dan Nelson summed up Adams' visit this way: "It was more of a reminder — an awakening — to put others before ourselves."
E-mail: jdoria@desnews.com