Two Men Named Dr. Howard House

On Dr. Howard House’s desk, in his office at the House Ear Clinic, there was a picture of a very different house with a very large display in which we could read the words “Dr. Howard House’s Ear Clinic.” This was a photo of the “other” Dr. Howard House’s office. This man was a chiropractor. When he found out that his namesake was a famous otologist, he reorganized his practice and also became a ear doctor.

I heard the following story from Dr. Gunnar Proud, who was the Professor of Otolaryngology of the University of Kansas at the time I was in Saint Louis. As a former resident of Dr. Theo Walsh, once in a while he came to visit his friends in the Department.

There was a young woman in Kansas City, MO, who had otosclerosis. It had started early in her life, and she had a mixed loss, with severe involvement of the high frequencies. Gunnar was a friend of the family and he was concerned about performing a stapedectomy on this patient. So he suggested that she should go to Los Angeles to hear Dr. Howard House’s opinion.

So she got herself on a plane and flew to Los Angeles. But she got there exactly on the week that the House Clinic moved from downtown LA to West Third Street, where it is now. She went to the address that Gunnar had given her and only found a closed door. So she got hold of a phone book and found “Dr. House’s Ear Clinic.”

Dr. Howard House received her warmly, heard her clinical history, examined her ears with an otoscope and took her to have an audiogram. After that she was submitted to a radioscopical examination.

When she came back to his office he told her: “You do have a hearing loss. We found that your intestine has many gases and these gases are elevating your diaphragm, compressing your lungs and the large blood vessels. For this reason your ears do not get enough blood. This is the cause of your hearing loss. But we will fix the problem.” Then she was treated with a colonic irrigation and sent home.

She was very mad when she phoned Gunnar Proud on coming back to Kansas City. “Are you crazy, or something? Why did you send me all the way to Los Angeles to get an enema?”

“Something is very wrong here,” he said. “Let me call Dr. House and then I will call you back.”

Then he called Dr. Howard House and told him the girl’s story. He could hear Dr. House’s laughter as he said, “Gunnar, she went to the other Howard House...”

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