Nick Loman
(nick@csosl.co.uk)
http://www.csosl.co.uk/
~nick/

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Seek and ye shall find
The Medical World Search site (http://pride-sun.poly.edu/) is a useful addition to the sites that allow you to search for medical material. The site not only searches its own index of the main medical sites on the web but can pass on your query to other search facilities. The site also features a powerful set of tools to help you refine your query.

Filez (http://www.filez.com/) is a new web site aimed at helping you find software on the internet. The site claims that you can search over 75 million files for specific titles. Category headings let you limit your search for titles to Windows, Macintosh, OS/2, and other platforms.

Medical science
Dolly, the cloned sheep, has been making headlines in cyberspace. A large resource in her honour has been set up at the BioSpace site (http://www.biospace.com/), and the ethics of cloning are discussed in the third edition of the HMS Beagle (http://www.hmsbeagle.com/). Set up by BioMedNet (http://biomednet.com), a "worldwide club for the biological and medical community," HMS Beagle is a biweekly webzine for biomedical researchers. Both sites are well presented and brimming with useful information. Unfortunately, you must register your email address and research interests (see "spamming" in miscellany) before you can access this site.

Clinical education
Radiological imaging remains one of the web's strong points. Interesting Ultrasound Cases is a collection of images and the resulting diagnoses from the University of California San Francisco teaching files (http://ultrasound.ucsf.
edu/USCases.html). United Medical and Dental Schools, London, are also extending their radiology teaching files ( http://www-ipg.umds.ac.uk:80/~acd/) with the development of The X-Ray Files.

Hypertext links are used in the web to take the reader to a related site. These links (seen as underlined words) are used to great effect by CHORUS (http://chorus.rad.mcw.edu/) which boasts an impressive 1100 documents on diseases and syndromes.

Cafe Herpe (http://www.cafeherpe.com/) is a new web site launched by Smith Kline Beecham providing medical information on genital herpes in a friendly virtual cafe environment. Inside Cafe Herpe you will find a reading lounge, a buffet, an espresso bar, a terrace, and a gallery. You can even summon "the waiter" to help you find information.

More about the Internet
"Spamming" is the practice of sending unwanted emails. They may be sent by individuals or businesses and usually advertise something, promote a "make money fast" scheme, or propagate chain letters. It happens because on many web sites you are asked to leave your email address or to post a message. This leaves you open to being spammed (see http://www.cix.net/spam/). A recent spam was the story of business travellers being drugged and then waking up to find themselves minus several vital organs (http://www.best.com/~
bmikkels/spoons/faxlore/kidney.htm). The story may seem ludicrous but many, including doctors, were taken in by it.

If you are still a little nervous about using the Internet then visit the Netskills site (http://www.netskills.ac.uk/). Netskills aims to help the UK Higher Education community make effective use of the internet for teaching, research, and administration. Of particular interest here is the Online Netskills Interactive Tutorial (http://www.netskills.ac.uk/TONIC/).

Miscellany
One of the problems with a new subject is mastering the jargon. Fortunately, there are several glossaries available on line covering a variety of subjects. Julian Dow's dead tree Dictionary of Cell Biology is available on the web (http://www.mblab.gla.ac.uk/~julian/dict.html). You can access the Free On Line Dictionary of Computing (http://wombat.doc.ic.ac.uk/). There is also an Epidemiology Dictionary (http://epidem13.plantsci.cam.ac.uk/ ~js/glossary
/course-gloss96.html).

If you like McDonalds, you might be interested in the McSpotlight site (http://www.mcspotlight.org/). The site has grown out of the longest, and arguably one of the most important, trials in English legal history - the so called McLibel case. The trial has already lasted over 300 days and the judges verdict is due sometime after Easter. One of the central issues of the case is the nutritional value of fast food. There's plenty of evidence on both sides of the case so judge it for yourself (http://www.mcspotlight.org/issues/nutrition/index.html).

And finally, remember that there is a UK Medical Student Mailing list (http://www.csosl.co.uk/sbmj/ml.html) for medical students to discuss both academic and personal interests with students all over Britain.