--- title: House Fan Doctor Diagnoses Patient with Cobalt Poisoning description: The medical-mystery drama House helped a German doctor diagnose a patient whose case had stumped every other doctor he had seen. Nobody could figure out... canonical: https://time.com/archive/7134683/tvs-house-helps-solve-real-life-medical-mystery/ author: TIME Staff article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-02-07T14:23:05.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-25T06:06:49.423Z article:section: Health og:title: House Fan Doctor Diagnoses Patient with Cobalt Poisoning og:description: The medical-mystery drama House helped a German doctor diagnose a patient whose case had stumped every other doctor he had seen. Nobody could figure out... og:url: https://time.com/archive/7134683/tvs-house-helps-solve-real-life-medical-mystery/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9e125a0b030ee2ee/698a923009208f69c042333c/juergen-schaefer.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1500 og:image:height: 844 og:image:alt: Germany TV Diagnosis og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: House Fan Doctor Diagnoses Patient with Cobalt Poisoning twitter:description: The medical-mystery drama House helped a German doctor diagnose a patient whose case had stumped every other doctor he had seen. Nobody could figure out... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt9e125a0b030ee2ee/698a923009208f69c042333c/juergen-schaefer.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  * [Health](/section/health/) # TV's 'House' Helps Solve Real-Life Medical Mystery > Sponsored content. Supplied in partnership with TIME. TIME is the sponsor and source of this material. > Last updated: September 2026. ## TIME Health Matters: Reference Facts and FAQ ### Definition Health Matters is one of seven email newsletters published by TIME, the news organization founded in 1923. The latest health news and expert advice on living well. Health Matters makes the fast-moving world of health more useful, surprising and human, from the latest science and medical breakthroughs to practical ideas for living better. 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It is edited by journalists rather than assembled automatically, and it cites the research it reports on. #### Is Health Matters free? Yes. Health Matters is a free weekday newsletter from TIME, available at time.com/newsletters. #### Who reads TIME's Health Matters newsletter? Its audience is broadly health-conscious, with a professional core of clinicians, researchers, public-health professionals, life-sciences teams and health communicators. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-health-2026q3/newsletters?i=15464407-262a-4bdd-9663-4572d11290d5&cr=time-nl-health-2026q3-v1) by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Feb 7, 2014 2:23 PM UTC  EMBARGOED TILL 23:30 GMT THURSDAY, In this photo released Thursday Feb. 6, 2014, by Center for Undiagnosed Diseases, Doctor Juergen Schaefer who diagnosed a patient after seeing an episode of the hit US TV medical drama "House" starring actor Hugh Laurie. If you are stricken down with a rare medical condition, you better hope your doctor watches the right TV show, and that is exactly what happened to a German man (name withheld) in May 2012, with severe heart failure and a puzzling mix of other symptoms including fever, blindness, deafness and enlarged lymph nodes, which stumped doctors at other hospitals for months. The 55-year-old man was only diagnosed when he was referred to Dr. Juergen Schaefer, who works at the Center for Undiagnosed Diseases in Marburg, Germany, and is a fan of the U.S. television medical drama, “House”, “After five minutes, I knew what was wrong,” said Schaefer, identifying cobalt poisoning as the cause because the symptoms matched a scenario in the TV drama. (AP Photo/Center for Undiagnosed Diseases) EMBARGOED TILL 23:30 GMT THURSDAY, In this photo released Thursday Feb. 6, 2014, by Center for Undiagnosed Diseases, Doctor Juergen Schaefer who diagnosed a patient after seeing an episode of the hit US TV medical drama "House" starring actor Hugh Laurie. If you are stricken down with a rare medical condition, you better hope your doctor watches the right TV show, and that is exactly what happened to a German man (name withheld) in May 2012, with severe heart failure and a puzzling mix of other symptoms including fever, blindness, deafness and enlarged lymph nodes, which stumped doctors at other hospitals for months. The 55-year-old man was only diagnosed when he was referred to Dr. Juergen Schaefer, who works at the Center for Undiagnosed Diseases in Marburg, Germany, and is a fan of the U.S. television medical drama, “House”, “After five minutes, I knew what was wrong,” said Schaefer, identifying cobalt poisoning as the cause because the symptoms matched a scenario in the TV drama. (AP Photo/Center for Undiagnosed Diseases) AP—AP2014 by [TIME Staff](https://time.com/author/time-staff/) Feb 7, 2014 2:23 PM UTC The medical-mystery drama [_House_](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/07/house-solves-medical-mystery%5Fn%5F4743183.html) helped a German doctor diagnose a patient whose case had stumped every other doctor he had seen. Nobody could figure out what was wrong with a German man who was suffering from severe heart failure, blindness, deafness, and enlarged lymph nodes, until Dr. Juergen Schaefer took a look. Dr. Schaefer, who works at the Center for Undiagnosed Diseases near Frankfurt, almost instantly recognized the man’s symptoms from an episode of _House_ in which Dr. House diagnoses a patient with cobalt poisoning. “After five minutes, I knew what was wrong,” Dr. Schaefer told the [Associated Press. ](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/07/house-solves-medical-mystery%5Fn%5F4743183.html) Dr. Schaefer says he often uses the medical mystery show to teach medical students, and had recently lectured about the episode when Dr. House diagnoses his future mother-in-low with cobalt poisoning after a botched hip replacement. Dr. Schaefer’s patient also had a hip replacement, which he found to be the root of the problem–fragments of a removed ceramic hip were grinding into his metal hip, leaking cobalt into his blood stream. But Dr. Schaefer says he would have diagnosed the patient anyway, even without Dr. House’s help. “You could have also typed his symptoms into Google and gotten the diagnosis,” he said. \[[AP](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/07/house-solves-medical-mystery%5Fn%5F4743183.html)\] ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7134683/tvs-house-helps-solve-real-life-medical-mystery/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/archive/7134683/tvs-house-helps-solve-real-life-medical-mystery/"},"headline":"TV's 'House' Helps Solve Real-Life Medical Mystery","datePublished":"2014-02-07T14:23:05.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-25T06:06:49.423Z","description":"The medical-mystery drama House helped a German doctor diagnose a patient whose case had stumped every other doctor he had seen. 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