Lupus Mystery Finally Solved by Sherlockian House Sleuth

Holmes and Watson

Ending entertainment…

This morning I read an article about the end of the 8 year series starring Hugh Laurie, House MD.  Although the title of the article mentioned Lupus, the article didn’t discuss it at all.  However, as a House MD fan, I thought the article was an interesting read.

I must admit I am somewhat embarrassed now that I have read this article, that I never realized the similarities between the characters of House and Sherlock Holmes until now, or that the literary devices used in House and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes were so similar.   The article by a sherlockian expert explains it all.

As a child, I owned a dog-eared copy of the exhaustive Sherlock Holmes, and read every Holmes story many times over.

House and Wilson

With a mother who was an elementary school librarian and who my first informal English literature teacher, I should have seen the similarities at some point during the past eight years of viewing episodes of House.  I guess I was just being entertained too much to notice the obvious.

Intellectual entertainment…

Here’s the link to the “goodbye” to House article by Lyndsay Faye at http://www.criminalelement.com:

It Wasn’t Lupus: A Sherlockian’s Farewell to House MD

I thought the article is a good read if you find this type of conversation interesting.

Alternative entertainment…

If not, may I suggest you might just enjoy the video below that I found on YouTube.  This has many video clips of scenes from the House M.D. series spliced together.  Each clip is a mention of lupus over, and over again!  Can you count the number of times “lupus” is mentioned?  I lost count after twenty!

The video editor did a great deal of  work splicing all these clips together!

Enjoy

Absurd entertainment…

Finally, I just could not resist doing a little splicing of my own, to conjure up an absurd picture of a Butter-House-Fly… may he fly away gently into the sunset of cancelled television series!

Butter-House-Fly MD admits “I finally have a case of lupus”

Lupus diagnosis in men – Dr. House, “this time it is lupus”

several years and several doctors for lupus diagnosis

It usually takes several years and several doctors for the average lupus patient to get an accurate diagnosis.

Since only 10% of lupus patients are men, it must be 10 times as difficult for them to get an accurate diagnosis.  1 out of every 150 people have lupus on the average.  That means that only 1 out of every 1,500 men have lupus. If the average family practice physician sees 20 to 25 patients per day, some 3 or more times each year, they are likely to have about thirty female and three male patients with lupus within their entire practice of 4,000 to 5,000 different patients.

These important doctors have the first and best opportunity to properly diagnose their patients with lupus.

Kudos to the writers and producers of “House” for once again helping raise lupus awareness.  However, this time the episode takes place outside his usual hospital clinical setting!  You will have to watch on October 3, 2011 to find out more and help usher in the new season of House on Fox TV, and hear Hugh Laurie [Dr. House] say “this time, it is lupus.”

http://www.fox.com/house/