Best Medical Advice on the Web

"When Mary Ryan's 4-year-old nephew, Nick, landed in the hospital with a serious infection, her brother called her in a panic. Ryan isn't a doctor. She's not a nurse. She's a librarian.

Nick had cat scratch fever, and for weeks it was impervious to antibiotics. Desperate, the doctor in Nick's small town wanted to use a more powerful antibiotic that might save him -- but also might make Nick deaf.

Ryan's brother hoped she could find something -- anything -- that would save his son without disabling him. Ryan asked one of her colleagues, a research specialist at the Texas Medical Center Library in Houston, to search the medical literature. She came up with an article about an antibiotic that worked against cat scratch fever but wasn't toxic...."

Read the full article by Elizabeth Cohen, at CNN