Doctors at a clinic in Germany report that the TV show House (also known as House, M.D.) provided them with an unexpected diagnosis for a heart failure patient.

Though the bedside manner of the misanthropic, Vicodin-addicted Dr. Gregory House may leave little to be desired, fans of the series this fictional character lends his name to thrill at his Sherlock Holmes-like powers of deduction.

House is a hospital drama where self-contained episodes are based less around the interpersonal entanglements of a show like ER, or the slapstick medical comedy of Scrubs, and the only bad guys are the diseases Dr. House himself diagnoses.

Given this premise, the writers of the show most likely trawled endless medical encyclopedias to come up with a supply of increasingly obscure diseases to keep Dr. House occupied across the show’s eight seasons.

Munchausen syndrome, frontal lobe disinhibition and “alien hand syndrome” are just a few of the medical nemeses House has faced. So comprehensive is the range of pathologies on the show, that Prof. Juergen R. Schaefer, director of the Center for Undiagnosed Diseases in Marburg, Germany, runs a medical class in which he teaches students to diagnose rare diseases using the TV show.

This class has led Dr. Schaefer to be known as “the German Dr. House” in the German media. But Shaefer’s unorthodox approach is no teaching gimmick. Indeed, Prof. Shaefer and his colleagues’ detailed knowledge of the show has had some surprising results.