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| "A Pox on Our House" | |
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| House episode | |
| Episode no. | Season 7 Episode 7 |
| Directed by | Tucker Gates |
| Written by | Lawrence Kaplow |
| Original air date | November 15, 2010 |
| Guest appearances | |
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"A Pox on Our House" is the seventh episode of the seventh season of the American medical drama House . It aired on Fox on November 15, 2010.
In the 18th century, the Sotos Oosterzoon, a Dutch slave ship, travels to Bermuda. There is an outbreak of smallpox among the African captives and, fearing quarantine, the crew throw the slaves overboard but it is too late: the ship is fired upon and intentionally sunk, along with its crew and captives, in order to contain the disease.
In modern day, a family on vacation dive into the wreckage of the slave ship. A teen girl brings a sealed glass jar back up from the wreck. She accidentally breaks the jar, cutting herself and exposing herself to the contents of the jar: scabs from the diseased captives.
House is certain that the disease is smallpox, coming immediately to the same diagnosis as the crew. The family is quarantined, the girl and father, being especially compromised, are put in an isolation room, and the team administers the smallpox vaccine to the two.
As soon as the tell-tale blisters begin to appear, the CDC is called per protocol and institutes a lockdown. As the lockdown is occurring, the team discovers a rash on the girl's armpits inconsistent with smallpox, causing House to change his diagnosis.
Dr. Dave Broda, the CDC official overseeing the case, blocks House's team from contact with the patients to make a new diagnosis, so they turn to the only other evidence they have: the captain's logs from the wrecked slave vessel. House enlists the aid of a translator, a Dutch webcam stripper he finds on the internet.
Based on the information in the logs, House is reconfirmed in his opinion that the girl does not have smallpox. House attempts to lie to get his team into the room to test his hypothesis, but is stopped. Masters, although unable to closely examine the patient, notices that the girl lacks the characteristic pustules that would be expected from smallpox.
Meanwhile, the girl's father begins to develop smallpox symptoms as well, but more characteristic symptoms. House is confounded as to why it appears that the girl does not have smallpox after all, but her father does. He concludes that the father contracted the disease from the smallpox vaccine they gave him. Unbeknownst to them, the father's immune system has been compromised by the return of his kidney cancer (which had been in remission).
House demands they administer the treatment for the smallpox variola. When Broda refuses, House risks his own life by entering the containment room and administers the treatment to save the patient. However, the father does not respond to the medication and dies. House figures now that the disease was likely smallpox after all, and also realizes that he has consequently exposed himself.
The rest of the team is despondent, but Masters returns to the journal in desperate search for another diagnosis. She notes that a cat on the ship had lost all his fur and then died, strong evidence for rickettsialpox, a disease easily treatable with antibiotics. Masters tasks House with searching the father's body for eschars. When House successfully spots eschars on the body, Broda orders that the daughter be treated with doxycycline, saving her life.
In a subplot, Wilson and Sam reexamine their relationship while treating a young chemotherapy patient whose mother gets locked outside of the hospital during the lockdown. House and Cuddy also face relationship difficulties after Cuddy discovers House lied to her in "Office Politics" in order to administer an unconventional treatment of Hepatitis C (an injection of Hepatitis A) to a patient.
The A.V. Club gives this episode a score of B−. [1]
Cotton Mather was a Puritan clergyman and author in colonial New England, who wrote extensively on theological, historical, and scientific subjects. After being educated at Harvard College, he joined his father Increase as minister of the Congregationalist Old North Meeting House in Boston, Massachusetts, where he preached for the rest of his life. He has been referred to as the "first American Evangelical".
A quarantine is a restriction on the movement of people, animals, and goods which is intended to prevent the spread of disease or pests. It is often used in connection to disease and illness, preventing the movement of those who may have been exposed to a communicable disease, yet do not have a confirmed medical diagnosis. It is distinct from medical isolation, in which those confirmed to be infected with a communicable disease are isolated from the healthy population.
Hepatitis is inflammation of the liver tissue. Some people or animals with hepatitis have no symptoms, whereas others develop yellow discoloration of the skin and whites of the eyes (jaundice), poor appetite, vomiting, tiredness, abdominal pain, and diarrhea. Hepatitis is acute if it resolves within six months, and chronic if it lasts longer than six months. Acute hepatitis can resolve on its own, progress to chronic hepatitis, or (rarely) result in acute liver failure. Chronic hepatitis may progress to scarring of the liver (cirrhosis), liver failure, and liver cancer.
Post-exposure prophylaxis, also known as post-exposure prevention (PEP), is any preventive medical treatment started after exposure to a pathogen in order to prevent the infection from occurring.
The New World of the Western Hemisphere was devastated by the 1775–1782 North American smallpox epidemic. Estimates based on remnant settlements say at least 130,000 people were estimated to have died in the epidemic that started in 1775.
Eczema vaccinatum is a rare severe adverse reaction to smallpox vaccination.
"Lines in the Sand" is the fourth episode of the third season of House and the fiftieth episode overall. The episode aired on Fox on September 26, 2006.
"The Mistake" is the eighth episode of the second season of House, which premiered on Fox on November 29, 2005. The episode is told in flashbacks when the hospital and Chase's career is on the line.
The 2007 tuberculosis scare occurred when a personal-injury lawyer from Atlanta, Andrew "Drew" Speaker, while infected with multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB), flew on several international flights bound for France, Greece, Italy, Czech Republic and Canada, before returning to the United States. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention believed at the time that Speaker was suffering from extensively drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR-TB), but failed to inform Speaker of this worsened sickness before his travels abroad. The incident sparked a debate in Congress on the failure of federal customs agents to stop him. Upon Speaker's return to the United States, the CDC placed him under involuntary isolation using a provision of the Public Health Service Act. With this action, Speaker became the first individual subjected to a CDC isolation order since 1963.
Smallpox was an infectious disease caused by variola virus, which belongs to the genus Orthopoxvirus. The last naturally occurring case was diagnosed in October 1977, and the World Health Organization (WHO) certified the global eradication of the disease in 1980, making smallpox the only human disease to have been eradicated to date.
Chickenpox, also known as varicella, is a highly contagious, vaccine-preventable disease caused by the initial infection with varicella zoster virus (VZV), a member of the herpesvirus family. The disease results in a characteristic skin rash that forms small, itchy blisters, which eventually scab over. It usually starts on the chest, back, and face. It then spreads to the rest of the body. The rash and other symptoms, such as fever, tiredness, and headaches, usually last five to seven days. Complications may occasionally include pneumonia, inflammation of the brain, and bacterial skin infections. The disease is usually more severe in adults than in children.
"Last Resort" is the ninth episode of the fifth season of House and the ninety-fifth episode overall. It aired on Fox on November 25, 2008. This episode is an "extended episode" as it runs for an extra seven minutes, taking the total episode's length without ads to 50 minutes.
The history of smallpox extends into pre-history. Genetic evidence suggests that the smallpox virus emerged 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. Prior to that, similar ancestral viruses circulated, but possibly only in other mammals, and possibly with different symptoms. Only a few written reports dating from about 500 AD to 1000 AD are considered reliable historical descriptions of smallpox, so understanding of the disease prior to that has relied on genetics and archaeology. However, during the 2nd millennium AD, especially starting in the 16th century, reliable written reports become more common. The earliest physical evidence of smallpox is found in the Egyptian mummies of people who died some 3,000 years ago. Smallpox has had a major impact on world history, not least because indigenous populations of regions where smallpox was non-native, such as the Americas and Australia, were rapidly and greatly reduced by smallpox during periods of initial foreign contact, which helped pave the way for conquest and colonization. During the 18th century the disease killed an estimated 400,000 Europeans each year, including five reigning monarchs, and was responsible for a third of all blindness. Between 20 and 60% of all those infected—and over 80% of infected children—died from the disease.
Progressive vaccinia is a rare cutaneous condition caused by the vaccinia virus, characterized by painless but progressive necrosis and ulceration.
African tick bite fever (ATBF) is a bacterial infection spread by the bite of a tick. Symptoms may include fever, headache, muscle pain, and a rash. At the site of the bite there is typically a red skin sore with a dark center. The onset of symptoms usually occurs 4–10 days after the bite. Complications are rare but may include joint inflammation. Some people do not develop symptoms.
The 1947 New York City smallpox outbreak occurred in March 1947 and was declared ended on April 24, 1947. The outbreak marked the largest mass vaccination effort ever conducted for smallpox in America. Within three weeks of the discovery of the outbreak, the U.S. Public Health Service, in conjunction with New York City health officials, had procured the smallpox vaccine and inoculated over 6,350,000 adults and children. Of that number, 5,000,000 had been vaccinated within the first two weeks. The rapid response was credited with limiting the outbreak to 12 people, 10 of whom recovered, while 2 died.
Four laboratory-confirmed cases of Ebola virus disease occurred in the United States in 2014. Eleven cases were reported, including these four cases and seven cases medically evacuated from other countries. The first was reported in September 2014. Nine of the people contracted the disease outside the US and traveled into the country, either as regular airline passengers or as medical evacuees; of those nine, two died. Two people contracted Ebola in the United States. Both were nurses who treated an Ebola patient; both recovered.
In 1721, Boston experienced its worst outbreak of smallpox. 5,759 people out of around 10,600 in Boston were infected and 844 were recorded to have died between April 1721 and February 1722. The outbreak motivated Puritan minister Cotton Mather and physician Zabdiel Boylston to variolate hundreds of Bostonians as part of the Thirteen Colonies' earliest experiment with public inoculation. Their efforts would inspire further research for immunizing people from smallpox, placing the Massachusetts Bay Colony at the epicenter of the Colonies' first inoculation debate and changing Western society's medical treatment of the disease. The outbreak also altered social and religious public discourse about disease, as Boston's newspapers published various pamphlets opposing and supporting the inoculation efforts.
John Williamson, more commonly known by the nickname Johnnie Notions was a self-taught physician from Shetland, Scotland, who independently developed and administered an inoculation for smallpox to thousands of patients in Shetland during the late 18th century. Despite having only an elementary education and no formal medical background, the treatment he devised had an extremely high success rate, resulting in the immunisation of approximately 3,000 people and the saving of many lives, which had a significant effect on the demographics of the Shetland population at the time. He is reputed not to have lost a single patient.
The 2022–2023 mpox outbreak in Belgium is part of the larger outbreak of human mpox caused by the West African clade of the monkeypox virus. Belgium was the fifth country, outside of the African countries with endemic mpox, to experience an outbreak in 2022. The first case was documented in Antwerp, Belgium, on 19 May 2022. As of 10 August, Belgium has 546 cases and 1 suspected case.
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