Yeah, Emedicine/Medscape recently got awesome, though I really don't know what the whole story is. I did register at their site and just put "Other" when it asked what my medical occupation was. I AM A WRITER, DAMMIT. THIS IS RESEARCH.
I suppose the sites for patients always go back around to "ask a doctor" for legal reasons, but they sure don't seem to trust anyone without a medical degree to even know which end of their body is supposed to point up. The doctor sites share the same view of patients, too--the "patient education" sections are always rather hilarious. (You can sense a vast background of experience there dealing with total morons. "Well, the fishook in my eye wasn't coming out when I yanked it, so I put some bacon grease on it to loosen it a little, but that still didn't work so I set fire to it ...") But me, I really want to know more than "your doctor will give you a shot to make it all better, and then you can have a lollipop."
By the way, you may also enjoy Gene Weingarten's The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. And Death. It's not exactly a professional medical reference, but it is a tour de force of all the fascinatingly horribly crazy shit that can happen to your body, and it is also bloody hilarious. (Weingarten is a newspaper editor, and his claim to expertise in this book is that he is the world's lead practicing hypochondriac.) Not much help for writer, either, but by god if you're an armchair medical geek it's great.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2011-06-28 09:22 pm (UTC)I suppose the sites for patients always go back around to "ask a doctor" for legal reasons, but they sure don't seem to trust anyone without a medical degree to even know which end of their body is supposed to point up. The doctor sites share the same view of patients, too--the "patient education" sections are always rather hilarious. (You can sense a vast background of experience there dealing with total morons. "Well, the fishook in my eye wasn't coming out when I yanked it, so I put some bacon grease on it to loosen it a little, but that still didn't work so I set fire to it ...") But me, I really want to know more than "your doctor will give you a shot to make it all better, and then you can have a lollipop."
By the way, you may also enjoy Gene Weingarten's The Hypochondriac's Guide to Life. And Death. It's not exactly a professional medical reference, but it is a tour de force of all the fascinatingly horribly crazy shit that can happen to your body, and it is also bloody hilarious. (Weingarten is a newspaper editor, and his claim to expertise in this book is that he is the world's lead practicing hypochondriac.) Not much help for writer, either, but by god if you're an armchair medical geek it's great.