I watched the new House episode just over an hour ago. The episode dealt with the “smallpox” disease, which Dr. House and his team thought was the disease the daughter of a married couple was infected with.
In the end, it was discovered that it was not smallpox, but rickettsialpox, a similar but treatable illness.
I watched the same episode. Good plot but apparently not exactly accurate. According to Wikipedia, no deaths due to rickettsial pox were ever reported. Yet, on this episode, the father died of the disease.
Thanks Bob. Too bad the father had to die before they have to know it was rickettsial pox :-)
@Bob, my take was that the father died because of a weakened immune system from a resurgence of cancer. What I would like to find out is how similar to smallpox the disease actually is. According to wikipedia, rickettsialpox was originally confused with chicken pox.