House – A Medical Sherlock Holmes?
The medical drama series follows the life of a brilliant diagnostician. Dr. Gregory House and his team do whatever it takes to solve puzzling cases. House’s world-renowned department only sees patients with an exceptionally complex and subtle diagnosis.
The medical cases are often rare but realistic, “a conglomeration of all the worst things that can happen to people from all over the world, crammed into one little community” (Andrew Holtz).
The patient is usually misdiagnosed. This causes further complications, but in turn helps lead House and his team to the correct diagnosis by using the new symptoms. Often the ailment cannot be easily deduced because the patient has lied about symptoms and circumstances.
House believes in an edict: “All patients lie.” They lie about how bad they actually feel, they lie about where they were when they first felt sick, they lie about their own bad habits.
Because House’s theories about a patient’s illness are based on intuition he often has trouble obtaining permission from his boss, hospital administrator Dr. Lisa Cuddy, to perform medical procedures he thinks are necessary.
The series also centers on House’s drug addiction. He is addicted to Vicodin, but says: “(The pills)… let me do my job and they take away my pain.” He has an injury that forces him to walk with a cane.
There are many similarities between Gregory House and Sherlock Holmes: House’s reliance on psychology to solve a case, his denial to accept cases he does not find interesting, his drug addiction, home address (apartment 221B, the same number as Holmes’ home)…
Is this a coincidence? I don’t think so.
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