I first learned about lockjaw when I was 10. The medical book perched next to "The Settlement Cookbook" on a kitchen shelf devoted quite a bit of space to tetanus.

I was a chatty child. The suggestion that someday my mouth could clamp shut terrified me.

Despite this fear -- or because of it -- I regularly checked the book to see if I was manifesting any signs of lockjaw.

This being the age of polio, I also studied, with morbid fascination, the photos of people in iron lungs. To be confined in such a contraption would be even worse than lockjaw, which did have a foreseeable end, even if it was death.

The school nurse did not have to force the Sabin vaccine down my throat. I opened wide.

No lockjaw there.

I was a child hypochondriac. Thank goodness I came of age well before the Internet appeared. I would have surely been a cyberchondriac.

That's the term for people who diagnose themselves via Web site.

Imagine the possibilities!

Whole databases full of popular and scholarly articles about diseases most of us have never heard of. Blogs detailing people's experiences with gall bladder surgery and cosmetic foot repair. Forums on weird menopause symptoms.

On the Net, a headache is never just a headache. It's at least a migraine. Possibly meningitis. Don't be surprised if it's a brain tumor.

The cyberchondriac does not need to be warned. The cyberchondriac is always ready for a brain tumor.

The old saw "a little knowledge is a dangerous thing" must have had its origins in the medical world. Students in the health fields are notorious for imagining themselves ill with the ailments they are studying.

Then there are the people who try to cure themselves with strange remedies, sometimes with disastrous results. But I think that urge is fading, although shark cartilage and colloidal silver maintain loyal followings.

The sites that cater to cyberchondriacs always recommend seeing a medical professional. This is because the people behind the sites don't want to get sued.

Cyberchondriacs go to the doctor's office with printouts in hand. They have diagnosed themselves and just want an MRI. Stress tests. Drugs.

This is empowerment. Or cyberchondria gone wild. I can't decide.

I just know that if my young self had instant access to the National Institute of Health, web md.com, emedicine.com, the Mayo Clinic, Wikipedia and the Centers for Disease Control, I'd never have graduated from high school, never mind college. I would have spent all my study time researching lockjaw, polio and my other bugaboos: toxic plants and eastern equine encephalitis.

I wasn't completely nuts. My father once had a brush with tetanus. I wasn't allowed to go into a friend's swimming pool because of a polio scare. My aunt told me of a neighbor who was paralyzed by EEE.

Maybe the Internet could have helped me. Surely I would have learned that most children are routinely vaccinated against tetanus.

Oh, who am I kidding? I would have fixated on the symptoms -- stiff neck, trouble swallowing, seizures. And panic would have set me a-burbling and twitching.

Like it kind of is now. Excuse me while I double-check virtualinfectioncentre.com.

Liz Soares is a freelance writer and the author of "All for Maine: The Story of Gov. Percival P. Baxter." She welcomes e-mail at Baxter24@aol.com