Neurotic self-diagnosis is usually common among med students. They study the diseases carefully and take in every symptom and, before they know it, every headache is a brain tumor and every pimple is skin cancer. The same thing happens to anyone who reads all the possible symptoms of most given diseases. If you read the symptoms of Ebola, for instance, you will be convinced that your fever is a sign that you have contracted the deadly virus.

You may also be familiar with the concept of this erratic, obsessive diagnosing from the popular “Three Men in a Boat (To Say Nothing of the Dog)”, by Jerome K. Jerome, where the main character assesses his own health and comes to the conclusion that he has every disease in the medical textbooks from the British Library, except for “housemaid’s knee.”

Given that access to the Internet is now widely-available, people can get medical information much faster than before. Unfortunately, these people can also get wrong medical advice and incorrect information regarding anything from symptoms to treatments or to statistics. The problem with medical misinformation is that the result may be death.

A new term was thus coined, namely “cyberchondria”, describing the effect of extensive Web browsing for information on a disease or symptom and coming to the conclusion that their cough is a sign of typhoid fever. The problem with so much information available a click away is that people prefer to ask WebMD instead of their real doctor, a laziness which can have disastrous consequences.

Also, when people start searching their symptom, they don’t stop at attributing it to one of the more common diseases, but instead associate it with the most serious and rare conditions.