Shore has said that the central storylines of several early episodes were based on the work of Berton Roueché, a staff writer for The New Yorker between 1944 and 1994, who specialized in features about unusual medical cases.
Shore afirmou que as liñas argumentais centrais de varios dos primeiros episodios estaban baseadas na obra de Berton Roueché, escritor para a revista The New Yorker entre 1944 e 1994, quen se especializara en artigos sobre casos médicos pouco comúns.