The author of the article engaged in hand-wringing about the fact that there are some sources of information on the Web that are frightfully unreliable. True, of course. But I think most folks who search the Web have acquired significant ability to separate wheat from chaff. And I have found that much of the most useful information comes not from mainstream sites (like WebMD) but from discussion boards and streams of comments on blog sites.

Some years ago I had a patient who complained of a sensation of repetitive electric shocks in his head. I sat down at a computer and discovered something on discussion boards that I didn’t find on any regular medical website.

Such sensations could be caused by abrupt withdrawal from antidepressant medicines. I went back to the patient and learned that, sure enough, he was depressed, had been prescribed such a drug, and, after taking it for months and finding that it wasn’t helping his mood, quit taking it – shortly before his electric shocks began. I told him to start it up again and explained how to taper and discontinue it gradually. He called me a month later to say that had worked beautifully and to ask me to refer him to a mental health professional who would treat him with conversational therapy instead of medicine.

The second reason I was aghast at the writer’s suggestion that patients abandon the Web and see their doctor instead is that their doctor already spends an inordinate part of his time in the office reassuring the worried well. A primary care doctor has a lot of patients to see: people with chronic heart and lung disease, high blood pressure, and diabetes, whose chronic illnesses require regular visits to assure that they are well-managed and optimally controlled. When he is not taking care of those people, he should have time to see patients with acute illnesses.

So this is what I would like to tell patients: You have a high fever and a terrible cough and think you might have pneumonia? You have horrid pain in the right upper abdomen that comes on after fatty meals and want to know if it’s your gall bladder?

You should be able to get an appointment to see your doctor in a short time frame – today would be nice – without competing with the patients who are worried about a rash that appears between the hours of 10 and 11 in the morning on the second and fourth Tuesdays of each month.

‘I have found that much of the most useful information comes not from mainstream sites … but from discussion boards and streams of comments on blog sites.’

Use the Web. Ask friends, family, co-workers. Be self-reliant. Do not seek professional health care for every little thing that doesn’t feel quite right. If you –and all of his other patients – make an appointment to see your doctor for every little thing, thus taking up all of his time reassuring the worried well, guess what will happen when his patient who might have pneumonia calls the office? That’s right. She will be told there are no appointments left, and she’ll have to come see me.