Gregory House is a fictional character and the titular protagonist of the American medical drama series House, created by David Shore and portrayed by Hugh Laurie.
Gregory House is a fictional character and the titular protagonist of the American medical drama series *House*, created by David Shore and portrayed by Hugh Laurie. ◦ He leads a team of diagnosticians as Head of Diagnostic Medicine at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital in Princeton, New Jersey. ◦ House's character has been described as a misanthrope, cynic, narcissist, nihilist, and curmudgeon, and the character is partly based on Sherlock Holmes. ◦ He identifies himself as a board-certified diagnostician with a double specialty in infectious disease and nephrology. ◦ House first attended Johns Hopkins University as a physics major and considered a Ph.D. in physics researching dark matter before committing to medicine. ◦ He was later expelled from Johns Hopkins after a fellow student reported him for plagiarism, and he finished at the University of Michigan Medical School. ◦ House suffered an infarction in his right leg that went misdiagnosed for three days, which he eventually diagnosed himself. ◦ He was unwilling to allow amputation, opting instead to endure excruciating post-operative pain to retain the use of his leg. ◦ A portion of the show's plot centers on his habitual use of Vicodin to manage chronic pain stemming from a leg infarction involving his quadriceps muscle, an injury that forces him to walk with a cane. ◦ He is an atheist. ◦
House's signature credo is that "Everybody lies." ◦ He elaborates that it is a basic truth of the human condition, and the only variable is about what. ◦ He rejects a patient's plea to die with dignity, stating, "There's no such thing! Our bodies break down, sometimes when we're 90, sometimes before we're even born, but it always happens and there's never any dignity in it... You can live with dignity; we can't die with it!" ◦ House insists on moral objectivity, stating, "I'm sure this goes against everything you've been taught, but right and wrong do exist. Just because you don't know what the right answer is... doesn't make your answer right or even okay. It's much simpler than that. It's just plain wrong." ◦ On metaphysical questions, he defaults to comfort over conviction, saying of near-death white-light visions, "There's no conclusive science. My choice has no practical relevance to my life. I choose the outcome I find more comforting." ◦ He has contempt for most societal institutions including feminism and religion. ◦
House takes clinical risks, stating, "I take risks. Sometimes patients die. But not taking risks causes more patients to die — so I guess my biggest problem is I've been cursed with the ability to do the math." ◦ Wilson observes that House's obsession with solving cases has nothing to do with saving lives, describing it as a "Rubik's complex" rather than a Messianic complex, meaning House is more concerned with figuring out what is wrong with his patients than with saving their lives, which he does simply because it is his job. ◦ House cites his choice to become a doctor to an encounter in his early teens at a Japanese hospital with a disheveled buraku healer who solved a case the other doctors could not; House noted that when all else failed, the doctors heeded the buraku's advice despite their intense distaste for him. ◦ On the inevitability of medical error, he tells students, "It is in the nature of medicine, that you are gonna screw up. You are gonna kill someone. If you can't handle that reality, pick another profession or finish medical school and teach." ◦
House operates under the premise that everybody lies, and the only variable is about what. ◦ He believes that telling someone they are dying tends to focus their priorities, and that the task is to find out what matters to them, what they are willing to die for, and what they are willing to lie for. ◦ He views medicine as inherently involving error, stating that doctors are going to screw up and kill someone. ◦ He maintains that right and wrong exist objectively, and that lacking knowledge of the right answer does not make an incorrect answer acceptable. ◦ On questions where there is no conclusive science, he chooses the outcome he finds more comforting when the choice has no practical relevance to his life. ◦
House identifies himself multiple times during the series as a board-certified diagnostician with a double specialty in infectious disease and nephrology. ◦ He leads a team of diagnosticians and is Head of Diagnostic Medicine at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. ◦ He first attended Johns Hopkins University as a physics major and considered a Ph.D. in physics researching dark matter before committing to medicine. ◦ He suffered an infarction in his right leg that went misdiagnosed for three days, which he eventually diagnosed himself. ◦
House is enigmatic and conceals many facets of his personality with a veneer of sarcasm. ◦ He uses his flippancy to conceal his affection toward his colleagues, denying it to the extent that he himself sometimes forgets it. ◦ When ordered by Cuddy to do his clinic duty, he deflects: "But as the philosopher Jagger once said, "You can't always get what you want"." ◦ House diagnoses a clinic patient he barely examines: "Unfortunately, you have a deeper problem. Your wife is having an affair... You're orange, you moron! It's one thing for you not to notice, but if your wife hasn't picked up on the fact that her husband has changed colors, she's just not paying attention." ◦
House is described as a misanthrope, cynic, narcissist, nihilist, and curmudgeon. ◦ He uses flippancy to conceal his affection toward his colleagues, denying it to the extent that he himself sometimes forgets it. ◦ He insists that right and wrong do exist. ◦ On metaphysical questions with no conclusive science, he defaults to comfort over conviction. ◦ He was unwilling to allow amputation of his leg, opting instead to endure excruciating post-operative pain to retain its use. ◦ He takes risks with patients that may result in death because he calculates that not taking risks causes more patients to die. ◦ He has contempt for most societal institutions including feminism and religion. ◦ He is Head of Diagnostic Medicine at the fictional Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital. ◦
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