"Occam's Razor" is the third episode of the first season of House, which premiered on the Fox network on November 30, 2004. The principle of Occam's razor is mentioned several times in the episode, as well as being the title of the episode itself.
Brandon and his fiancée Mindy are having sex in their house when Brandon passes out. Brandon ends up in the emergency room where he presents with cough, severe abdominal pain, nausea, low blood pressure, and fever. Cameron says that one disease cannot cause all of these symptoms.
After Brandon's kidneys begin to fail, Foreman suggests that he has a viral heart infection. House disagrees, saying that simultaneous development of hypothyroidism and a sinus infection is more likely. Foreman and House argue that each of their respective diagnoses more closely conforms to Occam's razor. Unexpectedly, Brandon's white blood cell count drops, indicating House and Foreman were both wrong. Brandon's damaged immune system leaves him vulnerable to the simplest infections.
At the clinic pharmacy, House develops a new theory that Brandon's cough medicine was accidentally replaced with the gout medicine, colchicine. House explains that colchicine poisoning accounts for all of Brandon's symptoms save one—his cough. However, a visit to Brandon's pharmacy appears to rule out the cough medicine as the source of the colchicine. Undeterred, House pulls out some of Brandon's hair, which House claims as further support for his theory. House orders treatment for colchicine overdose, and Brandon recovers.
House then raids the clinic pharmacy looking for a form of colchicine that would explain Brandon's overdose. Chase and Cameron discover from Brandon that his old "cough medicine" tablets did not have letters on them, while the genuine cough medicine they provide does. As this scene plays out, House discovers a colchicine pill in the pharmacy that looks similar to Brandon's old "cough medicine" and compares it to the real one with the letter.
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