House - Episode 12 (Season 2)
This medical review of a rather blah House contains a few spoilers, so don’t say I didn’t warn you…
Adam, a 16 year-old boy, is riding an ATV when he loses control and it crashes, catching fire. He is severely burned and brought to the hospital for treatment. House’s team is consulted when the patient demonstrates tachycardia (an elevated heart rate) and low potassium despite standard burn therapy.
Due to a lack of skin on his chest, the team cannot run an electrocardiogram (also known as an EKG or ECG) to check heart rhythm, instead they have to use an old fashioned instrument, a galvanometer. The heart reading appears normal, but the patient suffers a seizure while they are administering the test.
The team is concerned that Adam may have a brain infection or multiple sclerosis. Because of his condition is unstable, they are unable to move him to radiology for a CT scan or MRI (though they seem to have no trouble moving him into a hyperbaric chamber, not to mention flipping him on his side later). Because of concern about infection, a lumbar puncture (also known as a spinal tap) cannot be performed either. The doctors ultimately perform “transcranial Doppler sonography,” in other words they are looking at the blood flow in the patient’s brain by ultrasound (though in real life this doesn’t work nearly as well as it does here). They see no evidence of infection or multiple sclerosis, but they do find a subarachnoid bleed.
Later, while Adam is in the hyperbaric chamber, the team notices that the patient is having an orgasm. There is thought that his brain might be misinterpreting sensations (i.e. feeling pain as pleasure), but there is still concern about infection or vasculitis. Cameron is concerned that the burns may be infected and this is overwhelming is brain, but somehow a single treatment with maggots proves that there is no infection.
House declares that they must perform a lumbar puncture, only they must do it in the neck where there are no burns. Of course, the neck is the cervical spine as opposed to the lumbar spine of the lower back, so this would be a cervical puncture instead of a lumbar puncture and any doctor — especially a neurologist like Foreman — would know this. Anyway, the spinal fluid shows no evidence of infection or multiple sclerosis.
House wakes Adam up, who despite being in tremendous pain (and one would suspect groggy and very confused) is able to tell House precisely that he felt no tingling in his legs before the accident, but did lose bladder control and pass out before the crash. House deduces that the patient had a seizure before the accident and decides that antidepressants must be causing Adam’s seizures.
Adam’s parents deny that their son was depressed, but House doesn’t believe them. He plans on waking up Adam again to ask about antidepressant use when he notices a cigarette burn on his wrist and nicotine stains on his fingers (so much for doing a thorough exam on admission). He realizes that Adam was using antidepressants to help him stop smoking and this caused his seizures (and other symptoms too, presumably).
Meanwhile, House’s nemesis from early in his training is giving a lecture at the hospital on his new treatment for migraine headaches. House injects himself with this doctor’s “miracle cure” and then induces a migraine in himself with nitroglycerin. He is pleased when the other doctor’ cure fails to work, but now he’s stuck with a migraine. In the end, the drug company pulls funding from this doctor after House e-mails them about the failure of the drug.
This was a very unimpressive episode of House, and frankly the worst in recent memory. It’s true that that the final solution was correct, but only to a point. Certain antidepressants do raise the risk of seizure. This is particularly true of bupropion (better known as Welbutrin or Zyban), the antidepressant prescribed to help people quit smoking. However, this has nothing to do with ordering shady drugs over the internet; it’s a known risk of a commonly prescribed drug. Also note that this is an entirely different class of antidepressants than those associated with serotonin syndrome (or “serotonin storm”, as they called it in the episode) — which is what Adam’s other symptoms were blamed on. And for the record, antidepressants are not the most common drugs used for smoking cessation; that would be nicotine, as in “nicotine replacement” (patches and gum), particularly because it can be obtained without a prescription.
Overall, the plot was cluttered and the complications contrived. Concepts were advanced that had little to do with the story (Ooo…maggots!), and stupid mistakes were made. The side plot, Dr. House getting revenge on an old rival, could have been fun but ended up being less exciting than the rest of the uninspired storyline (like a pharmaceutical company would stop studying a drug it spent millions of dollars to develop because it didn’t work a single patient? Get real!)
This episode gets a C for the mystery and another C for the solution. The medicine earns a D, because I’m feeling generous. The soap opera aspects earn a C-.
February 15th, 2006 at 2:25 am
I have a question. Did you forget to take into account that House was hallucinating? Or that his old nemesis’ “miracle cure” had LSD in it? House’s email to the drug company didn’t just state that it failed to work for him but he must have also pointed out the lovely side effect any patient would be subjected to when using the drug, namely “seeing music.”
I agree that it was an overly busy episode and one that would have benefitted from a major rewrite. Both stories would probably have worked better on their own in separate episodes. And certainly the boy’s case was contrived to say the least. That cigarette burn was just about the lamest thing yet.
February 15th, 2006 at 8:10 am
Official Comment
I was under the impression that House took the LSD and antidepressants himself, not that it was in Bulldog’s miracle drug.
If it was in Bulldog’s drug, that would explain why House’s e-mail got the experiment canceled. But (and you knew there had to be a “but”):
1) The drug company should have known what was in the drug before sponsoring it.
2) LSD has a very short half-life, and wouldn’t still be around in the body the next day.
UPDATE: The more I think about it, the more certain I am that House had to take the LDS himself, because it “cured” his migraine and the whole point was that Bulldog’s drug could not. Of course, the official Fox House site is less than clear on this point.
February 15th, 2006 at 8:12 am
I know less than zero about medicine, but this episode stretched my suspension of disbelief past the breaking point. I can not conceive of a way in which House would not be fired and sued for several actions after the events of this show.
February 15th, 2006 at 8:59 am
Like Mike said the suspension of disbelief in this episode was unreasonably high even for laymen like myself. I hope the writing gets better soon.
February 16th, 2006 at 12:44 am
maggots? are they sterile?
and house uses nitroglycerine to trigger a migraine… wouldn’t it also cause other heart effects?
it seems that the writers love vasculitis, MS, any autoimmune diseases. there is more to medicine that those diseases.
and they couldn’t afford to move the patient to an MRI or CT scanner but they could move him to a hyperbaric chamber?
yeah.. this episode definitely could have been better. and the three stooges didn’t get any character development either.
February 16th, 2006 at 2:20 am
Just a quick question for the medical experts - what is the story with House’s (apparent) account of stopping LSD symptoms with anti-depressants? The last I knew, when someone shows up in an ER with a bad LSD trip, they get sedated. Like IV Valium or the like. I’ve never heard of a treatment that could actually end the “trip” part of the LSD experience before metabolism runs its course. Of course, I haven’t been concerned about it for about 20 years so if there is something new, I’d be very interested to know about it.
February 16th, 2006 at 2:44 am
The whole migraine subplot was worth it just to see a more-than-usually unshaven Hugh Laurie in an army jacket, baseball cap, and dark glasses in a lecture room. It was very funny. Wilson’s running commentary was great. Laurel and Hardy with M.D.’s.
I believe maggots and leeches are being used, and have been for some time now. Of course they were long ago, but have been restored. Yes?
February 16th, 2006 at 6:16 am
russell Says:
February 16th, 2006 at 12:44 am maggots? are they sterile?
I was under the impression that maggots used for debridement of necrotic tissue were specially propagated in a lab so that they could be sterile…sort of like the leeches used for swelling in reattached limbs…Is that right?
February 16th, 2006 at 7:19 pm
Yes, maggots can be used to remove necrotic tissue, iirc. They are of course bred in a lab under sterile conditions. Its pretty neat really, since maggots ONLY eat necrotic tissue, there is no harm of them damaging living tissue afaik.
February 17th, 2006 at 10:20 am
He must be a genius to learn Hindi so quickly–maybe he used the Rosetta Stone method! :]
I agree, this episode was totally bad.
You didn’t mention that one dose of verapamil won’t cause heart failure and what’s the deal with migraine prophylaxis if it was just induced one time artificially?!
February 17th, 2006 at 10:40 am
Official Comment
David,
I meant to mention that Verapamil comment, but there was so much else it slipped my mind. Especially the parts you mentioned and the “you will get constipated.” On one dose of Verapamil?
Then there was the whole false dilemma with Cameron “but if you’re wrong and we give him cyproheptadine…he’ll die!” Umm, NO (well, he will die eventually, we all do, but it won’t be because of the cyproheptadine).
Steve,
I’ve seen mention of reports that the use of SSRI-class antidepressants will dull the effect of LSD, but this is for people who are already on the antidepressants who take LSD. It won’t work House’s way because antidepressants take several days to build up to functioning levels — not a single dose. (And I should point out that while I’ve seen the LSD/antidepressant studies mentioned, I’ve never been able to find the actual studies, so who knows if they actually exist?)
February 17th, 2006 at 8:16 pm
How about giving the research aspects a D-? A pass only because research was actually mentioned.
From Webber mispronouncing ANOVA, to House’s inability to understand what a control group is, to the idea that a chemically induced migraine is at all comparable to a naturally occuring one, to the absurdity of one doctor’s e-mail stopping a clinical trial, nothing about it made any sense. If this is what you have to put up with on the medical side each week, I admire your being able to watch the show at all.
Since SSRI’s take up to 3 weeks to be effective, I wonder how many House had to take to stop the LSD effects so fast. And what the rebound effect would be
February 18th, 2006 at 10:47 am
> to the idea that a chemically induced migraine is at all comparable to a naturally occuring one,
Not to mention the idea that a migraine drug that doesn’t work for one patient is ipso facto useless for all patients…
February 19th, 2006 at 3:41 am
Scott, have you received any indication that your medical analysis is being read by the writers or producers of the show? While we all agree that the characters are fun, and that House is one of the most interestng characters ever created on TV, if the medical stuff is this far off, why isn’t anyone involved with the show doing anything about it? They have advisors–are they asleep? If you have been contacted by anyone from the show, or have contacted them, did anything come of it?
February 21st, 2006 at 8:40 am
He looked pretty hot sitting in there tripping his brains out in a towel, though.(don’t tell me…I’m the reason standards everywhere are going to hell, right?) Although I did guess that the medicine was junk, though, so don’t kill me too painfully. And I’m upset with myself for enjoying the showboating so much that “Homicide’s” “Subway” can’t bug me anymore without my looking like a big hypocrite.
February 21st, 2006 at 4:16 pm
I was so glad that I wasn’t the only one who disliked this episode. I was also wondering how Adam got such a perfect, circular, deep burn on his wrist - it’s unlikely he would’ve jammed cigarettes into his arm. A drop of burning gasoline made much more sense but wouldn’t have produced the aha! moment where House pulls a diagnosis out of thin air.
March 8th, 2006 at 11:50 am
Hi. New here.
One thing that bothered me about this episode was House’s acquisition of LSD. Either he
1) Had it at home already, which doesn’t seem very House to me
2) Went out and scored some LSD, and knew where to get it and from whom, all while suffering from a painful migraine that debilitated his basic functioning.
LSD: Not that easy to get. Not a common street drug. Often not really LSD but some cheaper chemical that causes similar hallucinations.
March 28th, 2006 at 7:56 am
Deb, he prolly had it either, cuz he knew before he took the lsd that he could stop the migrane using it. And same goes for the SSRIs.
As to how he got it, could be anyhow. its easy to find. but your obviously not a doctor, otherwise you’d know that they see patients who are using all sorts of cool drugs. So it wouldn’t be hard for him to look up a patients phone number in his file and ask for some. ITS NOT LIKE ITS AGAINST HOUSE’S ETHICS!
May 8th, 2006 at 1:35 pm
This episode was the first episode of house ive seen.. i was watching it with my babys grandfather (father in law sorta) and right when the shower scene came on we both looked at each other and thought “is this fool trippin on acid” and when the sweat dripped off and swirled into colors we both started laughing cause we were totally right afterall.
from my experience, that whole self-induced lsd trip seemed very unrealistic… i know people on anti-depressants who still fry their balls off off a dose… i dont think their is a single chemical that can stop LSD in its track… maybe numb it down.. but even that is still pretty far fetched to being normal again hahahaha.. i thought it was funny how he opened all the windows saying “its such a beautiful day” even though he hated sunlight hahahahah oh man…
acid = good old times…
May 18th, 2006 at 11:32 pm
I had just started on zyprexa for an acute bipolar mania episode for about 2 and a half weeks when
a “friend” of mine who I used hang out with called to offer some ecstacy (E, X). I had never tried it before,
but had recently made a resolution to stop all illicit drugs, so naturally I decided that this would be my last time.
As it turns out, and as I expected, I didn’t get much out of the experience. My thinking is that because the
zyprexa is an atypical antipsychotic, it works to balance brain chemicals, which counteracts the effects of the X, which
causes it’s effects precisely by raising the levels of pleasure chemicals like serotonin and dopamine out of balance
temporarily. I also didn’t get the low of “coming off” the X. I’ll say that I might have felt a little bit of something,
but it was so light that it could have been due to a placebo effect of expecting something to happen even though I knew better.
So, how does this relate? Antidepressents are also supposed to balance out your brain chemicals and may dull the lsd trip that way, by preventing the trip from reaching as high of a level, though SSRI antidepressents and atypical antipsychotics are two
fundamentally different drugs.
June 6th, 2006 at 5:08 pm
Well, there are many chemicals that have an “antidepressant” effect,
and the effects on, eheh, recreational doses of alice d. differ.
In case somebody wants to read the study, it’s
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=8726753&query_hl=4&itool=pubmed_docsum
and
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=pubmed&dopt=Abstract&list_uids=8788508&query_hl=4&itool=pubmed_docsum
and
http://leda.lycaeum.org/?ID=8423
(a letter by the author of the study).
So it’d work with most of the SSRIs, but not with the older Tricyclics, don’t ask me
about Effexor…
The effects, well, LSD is a serotonine agonist or partial agonist on several
receptors. Although serotonin release is at some point involved in the migraine
process, at least one class of selective serotonine agonist, the triptanes,
is successfully used in the first stages of an attack. Well, antidepressants
are also used in the prevention of migraine, so maybe the LSD was just
because House wanted an excuse to tune in, tune out, drop out already
achieved…
Note aside, cluster headache is not migraine, but there are some people
using mushrooms against ist:
http://www.clusterbusters.com/
And this leaves us with an interesting idea about the Doctor
getting his supply:
Dr. House walking on a farm with some hippies and discussing with
them the effects of vaccination, traditional medicines, chronic
marihuana use and the like. Could get interesting…
July 22nd, 2006 at 12:52 am
Hi, all, just discovered this site. Sorry for my poor english.
Just to point out that, as it was hinted by House during Weber’s lecture, he “sucks” at Mathematics. So, it should be flaws in his math that House spoted, and not its pointless experiment, that made the lab cut his research. Weber actually said that his sponsors complained about the numbers of his research, when confronting House in the end. So, House’s self-experiment was of course just an humoristic spot (altough I think that, if he actually didn’t had the migrane headache by taking Weber’s drugs, he would stop his vendetta right there), but the fact the he found errors in Weber’s math doesn’t seem that ludicrous. It won’t be the first time a scientist make a false claim to get more funding, or Weber could even have made an honest mistake somewhere.
October 27th, 2006 at 2:05 am
Can anyone translate the Hindi?? I KNOW that “Teri maa” means “Your Mother..” so I KNOW that House was NOT saying Thank You or Excuse Me in Hindi. He was definitely cursing Weber in Hindi but I would like to know exactly what he said.
November 12th, 2006 at 2:15 am
Why in the world would House need a galvanometer (connected to the limbs) to look at the rhythm of the heart if the chest had no skin??? A normal ECG machine would do fine, just use the limb leads and don’t bother with the precordial leads. That would already yield I, II, III, aVL, aVR and aVF. Only V1-V6 would be missing. I dare say that the plot would’ve been a lot more readable than some dinky ancient toy.
Tim, “Bahut Bahut Shukriyah” means “Thank you very much” in Hindi.
November 14th, 2006 at 6:51 pm
Shukr-guzari Deepak. But what does Teri maa ki mean ??
November 26th, 2006 at 6:28 am
while injecting the drugs ( weber’s drug and the other) house didn’t loosen or open the tourniquet. that’s another lame point of this episode.
November 26th, 2006 at 6:47 am
also what was the song during the trip in the bathroom? does anyone know?
November 28th, 2006 at 9:02 am
The song was one of my favorites, “Get Miles” by the British band Gomez. They are terrific, you should check them out, especially the first two albums, Bring It On and Liquid Skin.
November 29th, 2006 at 5:29 am
Umm…according to my wife (a native Hindi speaker, I’m not), that’s a rather bad phrase, roughly translating to “motherf**ker”. Yikes!!! If House really picked up that much Hindi in a short time, he really is a genius.
December 3rd, 2006 at 4:21 pm
Deepak, Shukr-guzari. Yeah, thought so! I’ve heard Hindi curses before.Though one doesn’t have to be a linguist to somehow acquire the somewhat less-than-polite vocabulary. Asian expletives tend to be quite vivid, picturesque and colourful to boot. You should just listen to Cantonese or Vietnamese one day… Thanx again, mate.
December 6th, 2006 at 5:10 am
The burns management was nonsense - absolute drivel. No reason at all you couldn’t run an ECG, and no reason at all why he couldn’t have been transferred to a CT or MRI. The idea that someone would be sedated to the point of coma without being intubated and ventilated is completely ridiculous. And of course full thickness burns are painless - the nerve endings have been destroyed, so patients certainly dont wake up screaming.
December 10th, 2006 at 5:35 pm
Did anyone else get irritated by the fact that he “just” wakes up in the end, looks
through the window and smiles at his parents? I’m no doctor, but I’m pretty sure if you’ve
been in a chemically induced coma, you don’t wake up like that all happy and healthy…?!
December 17th, 2006 at 1:31 pm
I don’t know anything about this galvanometer, but it appeared to be the same thing as a 3-lead or 4-lead. Am I wrong? Also, as an EMT, I know that Nitro produces some pretty severe headaches (that’s how we know that it is working on the patient and not expired or exposed to sunlight) but does it actually produce a migraine? I’ve never heard it said that Nitro produces a migraine that won’t go away for days at a time with no relief except for LSD… maybe it’s just shoddy training on my part.
January 7th, 2007 at 4:47 am
Non-medical nitpick: Apparently taking a page from every bad movie ever made, the ATV *explodes* in a giant ball of fire immediately on impact. In case there was any doubt, this is ludicrous. Liquid gasoline does not explode but rather burns and simply crashing is not enough to ignite it anyway.
And I’m really surprised that no one (especially House!) caught Cameron’s comment that “most people don’t orgasm from a needle prick.” I’m amazed that she could even deliver that line with a straight face.
January 7th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
I found this episode a bit obnoxious. The goofy ATV explosion at the beginning should have been some indication where things were headed. The show is at its weakest when it tries to be shocking. The whole affair seemed formulaic. Everyone went through the motions. Even House’s revenge against his med-school nemesis was dull. Possibly the worst episode so far in season 2. Not enough to make me stop watching, as I know it can often be a clever and entertaining series - but this one was disappointing.
January 29th, 2007 at 3:41 pm
I just found this site and I have to say I am seriously surprised to find so much negative feedback on a “fan site”, which in itself I find rather amusing.
Running the danger of sounding really, I mean really ignorant, but most of the times I don’t have the faintest clue what the heck they are talking about when they throw around their big medical words and honestly I don’t even care. It’s a TV show for crying out loud.
Sure, some things are obviously pretty far fetched, but as long as it entertains and amuses me, so be it. Give them a little slack. It’s not like you are supposed to be able to perform medical procedures after watching a season of House. I think, you might be better of actually studying medicine.
So, having said that and blissfully ignoring all the things that shouldn’t have been or should have been, I have to say, that episode just cracked me up. Wilson’s reactions to House’s comments during the Weber lecture just had to make you smile. And I don’t mind saying it, but I liked it!
February 13th, 2007 at 6:55 am
I guess that most of the bad remarks about this episodes or general critics of the whole series are remarks by people trying to make sense of the plot. I can’t say for sure but I guess there are people out there who like to understand the whole plot and how the story develops, I’m one of them. So when things just don’t fit in like it’s supposed to in real life, we have our grouses.
And I think, just by reading through the remarks, that a lot of them are made by people who actually have some knowledge in the field. They’re posting here to discuss about stuff that actually interest them. Not just to complain that there’s some “bad medicine” in the show. Whether there is or isn’t “bad medicine”, I’m sure some of us still enjoys it.
February 14th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
Has it been shown that LSD serotonin antagonist properties are what cause it’s main effects? I remember reading that a certain analogue of LSD was just as potent of a serotonin antagonist but created no entheogenic effects. Or maybe that fact is irrelevant, just that it is an antagonist at all is what matters. If that’s true I’m sure there would be an more easily obtainable chemical that would work, but that wouldn’t be as fun now would it.
March 7th, 2007 at 4:19 pm
Yeah, the research aspect in this episode was terrible. House claims Weber sucks at math, but Weber was just reporting the results of a statistical analysis of clinical trial data. There are specialized software packages for stats - nobody does statistical analyses by hand, even simple tests like ANOVA. You pretty much just plug in your data and press “go”. I suck at math, but I can still do stats.
March 24th, 2007 at 12:23 pm
It’s true that statistical analysis tends to be done by software packages, but IMO reading and interpreting the results does require a minimum of mathematical competence.
May 21st, 2007 at 11:14 pm
As a migraine sufferer, I can’t believe House would deliberately induce one just to prove a point: had he no idea how bad the pain can be? It is true that the pain can get so bad you want to die. Count yourself fortunate if you’ve never had one. Still, it does play into his stubborness to prove himself right, no matter the cost. Good job showing the sensitivity to lights and sound(wht, no nausea?), but how did he manage to to get from home to work in one piece (I assume he was driving) without incident? Any movement(heck, just sitting up!) can be pretty damn painful. Still, it was a good portrayal of a migraine. I loved Wilson deliberately talking loudly and making noise, trying to show House what a schm#ck he (House) has been.
(And was that migraine drug supposed to worked at once or did it need time to build up in the system?)
Before triptans came out, I used a migraine medication that included ergotamine, derived from ergot, also the source of LSD. (See ergot poisoning/ St. Anthony’s fire at Wikipedia, etc. for information on the fungus.) House could have used ergotamine to treat the migraine, but it was way cooler to see the good doctor tripping out in the locker room. Not very interesting to hear he used ergotamine from the hospital pharmacy, is it? Can anyone say “flair for the dramatic”?
June 2nd, 2007 at 6:41 pm
While I agree with JoanHH, why did House simply not use Imitrex (sumatriptan) for his migraine, he wouldn’t have needed the cheesy bit about also needing to take the SSRI antidepressant … but since LSD is a serotonin AGONIST in and of itself, taking an SSRI wouldn’t remove the halucinations, would it? He’d need a 5-HT ANTAGONIST for that.
July 8th, 2007 at 6:07 pm
I’m curious. That video screen house was looking at on the come patient he was giving a migraine to, (A) How is the image produced? and (B)How is it read I ask because (with the exeption of the wire Chase inserts later) I could make out no definable image, it just looked like a red smear on the screen to my admittedly untrained eye.?
July 17th, 2007 at 2:36 pm
In my opinion one of the best house episodes. But again, they did it totally wrong with his pupils. while usually house pupils should be extremely small due to his abuse of opioids, under LSD, he should have extremely dilated pupils. i think it’s not that hard to achieve, or is it? On the other hand, they can’t give him real vicodin just to have his pupils constrict all the time.
July 17th, 2007 at 2:42 pm
just forgot: as far as I know, taking an SSRI will even prevent LSD effects, like alot of antidepressiva do. However, I’m pretty sure you can’t end a LSD trip by taking some AD’s, they need some time to build up their effect - it’s the same myth like that one that you can stop a bad trip with benzodiazepines. also, LSD itself has been shown in several studies, ironically several done in INDIA, can prevent migraine for a prolonged time, also acts as a great supplement for analgesics and also has next to no dangerous or even unpleasant body load, except the effects you usually would have when your brain is overflowed with serotonine: slight temperature raise, slightly heightened blood pressure and heart beat and increased speed in bowel movement. however, the psychich dangers are not something you can discuss about, the potential for it IS there.
October 29th, 2007 at 10:22 am
In response to Deepak’s answer. I am a native Hindi speaker. ‘teri maa ki…’ does not translate to motherf***er, though it is an expletive nonetheless. It translates literally to ‘your mother’s …’ (fill the blanks yourself). When we’re feeling exceptionally angry, we do fill the blank with a body part which most people here would guess anyway and when we’re not we just say ‘teri maa ki …’
December 14th, 2007 at 1:19 pm
Do the maggots hurt as they eat you? Or does the fact that they only eat dead meat mean, since nerve endings may have died, that there’s no sensation left?
December 22nd, 2007 at 4:17 pm
The main thing in this episode which annoyed me as a Dutch viewer was that House referred to a “Belgian doc Einthoven” who invented the galvanometer (used for making electrocardiograms). Willem Einthoven was a Dutchman, not a Belgian.
When Americans think of The Netherlands it’s always drugs hookers and tulips (and the killer of Nathalee Holloway). I spoke to an American once who was amazed that we don’t walk on wooden shoes and don’t all smoke pot and collect porn. So having of our most famous scientists (who won the Nobel prize for medicine in 1903) misrepresented as a Belgian is just plainly annoying.
January 19th, 2008 at 2:55 pm
i am surprised that no one ever quoted/ find amusing the reference: 2 + 2 = 5 / Two plus two equals five there ( in India), come on, anyone ever read 1984 - Orwell????
January 19th, 2008 at 3:00 pm
oh, and he really kicked his ex teachers ass, how can u not love that? who wouldn’t want the opportunity to do that, it’s every students secret dream…..
February 9th, 2008 at 10:28 am
Scott,
While I really enjoy your reviews and finding out how much of the medicine is ‘real’, I feel that sometimes you do not watch the episodes closely enough, and this is reflected in your review. For example, you say: “Of course, the neck is the cervical spine as opposed to the lumbar spine of the lower back, so this would be a cervical puncture instead of a lumbar puncture and any doctor — especially a neurologist like Foreman — would know this”. Foreman clearly says “I only saw a cervical tap once, and that guy got paralyzed” when House suggests a “lumbar puncture”.
March 22nd, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Love the site - as I catch up on episodes, it’s nice to have this site to balance the storytelling with the medicine. I have an extremely high threshold for disbelief as long as the story I’d told well. In this, House almost always delivers.
Having said that, I disagree with the assessment of the author and many of the other commentors. The scene of the lecture room when House confronts Weber is one of the best scenes of its kind I’ve ever seen on the series. House uses his biting wit to publically humiliate an old rival and yet has the tables turned right back on him by the end of the scene. Wilson’s running commentary, House’s ridiculous disguise and the look of horror on the face of the innocent mango juice drinker all make for a perfect scene. I would show this episode to anybody new to the series as a great primer to the show (though probably not the doctors).
Great reviews, though.
April 15th, 2008 at 7:38 pm
I really had to offer one or two things.
LSD is a common drug.
It was also discovered during a search for a new migraine remedy.
Sandoz still produces many ergot based migraine remedies.
Ergotamine is also used for things like menstrual cramps.
LSD is also currently being used in many different research studies
around the world. I am not sure about the mitigating effects of anti-depressants
on an acid trip. I was always led to believe that antidepressants and psychedelics were a big no-no because of their activity in effecting neurotransmitters like serotonin. The funy thing about LSD is that only a tenth of an actual dose is able to cross the blood/brain barrier and all of the drug has left the brain by the time that the user starts to fell the effects.
Drugs like thorazine are frequently used to make a patient in the middle of a bad trip more manageable, but they only affect the physical symptoms.
The patient is still tripping, they just can’t react to it anymore. It is kind of like the K hole that users experience after ingestion of large amounts of ketamine.
Also, in regards to purity of street samples of LSD confiscated by the DEA, There have actually been very few instances where drugs that were reported as being LSD were anything different. There are reports of some samples containing LSA, which is a precursor, but most of the drugs sold as LSD are actually LSD. The only difference is that dosages have dropped from an average of 150 mcg to 50 mcg. This information can all be readily obtained by going to the DEA’s website or looking on Erowid.com.
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