Medical Investigation--and House--based on fact

If you liked MI at all--and also, if you didn't like it--you should read Berton Roueche's medical investigation essays. They were published in the New Yorker magazine over a period of approximately 40 years, always under the heading "Annals of Medicine." They've been collected into various books (THE MEDICAL DETECTIVES--2 volumes--and other titles)which may be available at your local library (or look online, at Amazon or ABEBooks.com)and also you can search for them on the 80 years of New Yorker DVD-Roms. Roueche investigated actual medical mysteries and interviewed the doctors and researchers who figured them out. He described the process(es) used. Each one was absolutely fascinating. The first one was "Eleven Blue Men," about the alcoholics at a soup kitchen, who overly salted their oatmeal with saltpetre (accidentally put into the salt shakers). I was flipping channels when I saw the MI episode about the insecticide that had spilled onto blue jeans. I knew immediately that they had tapped Roueche's writings because that one, too, had happened. Apparently HOUSE also uses Roueche's work to come up with plot lines. I really recommend the original writings. In the meantime, I am still watching ER and sometimes wondering why, and then I see something like the episode on 4/19/07, where the elderly man with Alzheimer's disease is mourning his son's unexpected death over and over again (with amazing, totally believable acting) and I guess that's why.