Aug 18, 2012
The classical medical parody The House of God by Samuel Shem (AKA psychiatrist Stephen Bergman) has been a must read for medical students and residents since its publication in 1978. The August 2012 Let Magic Happen newsletter has more details about The House of God and the somewhat darker and not quite as funny sequel, Mount Misery, another parody chronicling Basch’s psychiatric residency. The Laws of The House of God are listed below and explained in the accompanying 9 minute video.
The first 8 of the 13 Laws of The House of God are attributed to the legendary Fat Man, the resident who is the only voice of sanity during Roy Basch’s tumultuous internship. The Laws are introduced in ALL CAPS in sequential order in the book with the last 5 apparently being made up by Basch himself.
The Laws of The House of God
I: Gomers don’t die.
II: Gomers go to ground.
III: At a cardiac arrest, the first procedure is to take your own pulse.
IV: The patient is the one with the disease.
V: Placement comes first.
VI: There is no body cavity that cannot be reached with a #14 needle and a good strong arm.
VII: Age + BUN = Lasix dose.
VIII: They can always hurt you more.
X: If you don’t take a temperature, you can’t find a fever.
IX: The only good admission is a dead admission.
XI: Show me a BMS who only triples my work and I will kiss his feet.
XII: If the radiology resident and the BMS both see a lesion on the chest X ray, there can be no lesion there.
XIII: The delivery of medical care is to do as much nothing as possible.
Jul 08, 2025
POSTED BY Larry Burk
This blog on the 7th chakra follows the 5th chakra and 6th chakra blogs in the prior 2 months announcing The Chakra Self-Healing Protocol 7-module course I will be teaching on Tuesday evenings in August and September for The Shift Network. The course will be officially launched via a free introductory event on July 26th which will be a prerecorded interview and experiential process with Shift Network Founder and CEO Stephen Dinan preceding the first module on the 1st chakra on August 12th. Read the rest of the blog.
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