You have to have all of your senses very heightened, like an animal in the jungle.

This is Yolana Zimmerman.

You have to be hypersensitive to what the medical staff needs and sometimes you have to feel

like what the parents need.

For 10 years, Yolana reported to work at a hospital, but not as a doctor or a nurse.

She didn't wear scrubs, but she did have a uniform.

The red nose is a mask, like the smallest mask in the world.

Immediately whoever sees you knows that you're different.

Yolana is a clown, very specifically, she's a medical clown.

It's a profession, just like any other profession, even though we're being silly.

I'm DeLontheris and this is Atlas Obscura, celebration of the world's strange, incredible

and wondrous places.

And we are all going to pile in to the clown car today, or better yet we are all going

to pile in to the clown ambulance, because today we are headed to medical clown school.

Let's have to this.

Clowning goes way, way, way back.

Mimes, court gestures, there have been clowns essentially as long as there have been people.

And almost for as long, there have been medical clowns, clowns that work specifically with

sick people.

Researchers believe that clowns have worked in hospitals all the way since the time of

hypocrites, when the belief was that humor affected health.

In the early 19th century, a famous trio called the Fratellini Brothers made the rounds

...