The most House (the TV show)-like case that ever happened in my medical career was the case of the patient with liver failure due to green tea intoxication.<p>A young man presented in our hospital with acute liver failure. He'd just spent a month traveling through the rain forests of Brazil, Colombia and Peru. During his trip, he'd consumed unknown drugs in a Peruvian shaman ceremony and had unprotected sex with a Peruvian sex worker.<p>We tested him for everything obvious. He didn't test positive for any known drugs or any obvious drug-related toxins. He didn't have HIV. He didn't have hepatitis A, B, or C. He didn't have EBV, he didn't have CMV, he didn't have Dengue Fever, he didn't have Yellow Fever, he didn't have Malaria. He didn't have any sign of autoimmune conditions.<p>We called the institute for tropical diseases. We tested him for tropical diseases we'd never even heard of. He didn't have those. He didn't have Syphilis. He didn't have Gonorrhea. He didn't have liver cancer, or any other discernible cancers.<p>We called the institute for tropical diseases again. They started researching. We tested him for diseases the experts for tropical diseases hadn't even heard of. He had none of those, either.<p>His liver, which had started failing for no discernible reason, now stopped failing, for equally indiscernible reason. We started planning his discharge.<p>We had a nice final discussion. He really appreciated how hard we'd tried, he said, and he really appreciated how kind everyone had been, and sorry again about the unprotected sex with sex workers thing, that was effing stupid in retrospect. He said he was looking forward to getting home and detoxing from all this. He said he didn't think the green tea we had on the ward (cheap, shit, comes in bags, unlikely to have ever encountered a tea plant in real life) did anything much, detox-wise, and anyway he'd feel bad emptying our hot water carafe all the time.<p>Um. How much green tea do you drink, I asked him.<p>4 to 5 liters per day, he said.<p>I googled "green tea liver failure," with some vague memory that sometimes tea gets contaminated during the drying process and maybe he'd caught a bad batch? Turns out, green tea just... causes liver failures, occasionally, in higher doses. Probably due to the anti-oxidants.<p>You live and you learn.<p>The patient went home and limited his green tea consumption to no more than a cup per day. He checked in with me a year later, because I'd asked him for an update, and his liver was doing perfectly fine and had never failed him again.