Historically known as a person licensed to give out medicine and various treatments the word doctor is beginning to be used interchangeably in many other fields as well. For example, with some quick online searching you can find all sorts of online doctors; everything from your traditional arthritis doctor and pc spyware doctors too. It seems you can almost find a doctor who has specialized into nearly every field imaginable.

Let's look a bit further into doctors online. Without too much trouble you'll find doctors and health professionals on the internet that you can ask health and medical questions. Their replies are meant to be educational in purpose and shouldn't be considered personal medical care. Sometimes responses are answered via email, but most often answers are posted on a FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) page or a bulletin board type forum. This gives everyone the ability to search, view, and therefore, benefit from the information.

You'll also find a few live question and answer chat sessions. If you can't make the scheduled chat time, many of the sites will allow you to post your question ahead of time and return later to view the details of the chat and see if your question had been brought up and answered.

Let's now define the word doctor. According to dictionary.com a doctor is:

1. A person, especially a physician, dentist, or veterinarian, trained in the healing arts and licensed to practice. 2. a. A person who has earned the highest academic degree awarded by a college or university in a specified discipline. b. A person awarded an honorary degree by a college or university. 3. Abbr. Dr. Used as a title and form of address for a person holding the degree of doctor. 4. Roman Catholic Church. An eminent theologian. 5. A practitioner of folk medicine or folk magic. 6. A rig or device contrived for remedying an emergency situation or for doing a special task. 7. Any of several brightly colored artificial flies used in fly fishing.

Acquiring a traditional doctor's degree requires many years of preparation and devotion. People usually join the medical colleges at the age of 19 and graduate at the age of 25. Once they get through the exams the physicians ultimately start their career at age 28 or 29 years as they begin their internship of 3 years. With the internet now widely available people can now study online as well. But do extensive research and study their authenticity before admitting yourself to any online colleges.

There are different types of traditional doctors specializing in different fields. Here are just a few:

Chiropractor: One who is especially skilled in precise focus on bones, muscles and soft tissue alignment. They usually adopt the techniques of physical therapy, massage therapy to heal different skeletal injuries and muscular imbalances.

Dentist: The Dentist is well trained in diagnostic of oral cavity.

Gynecologists: A Gynecologist is a doctor who is engaged in treatments of women regarding their reproductive and hormonal problems.

Pediatricians: Pediatricians are doctors specializing to treat infants, children and teenagers.

Homeopath: These Doctors are trained in homeopathic medicine. They use the Homeopathic medicines for the remedies of different diseases. Homeopathic medicines have no side effects like the allopathic medicines.

Ophthalmologist: Experts in treating the eyes. They often work in combination with Optometrists.

Optometrist: Optometrists are skilled in testing the visual acuteness and fitting correct lenses to increase vision.

Cardiologist: Specialists who takes care of the heart and related diseases.

Psychiatrist: Psychiatrists are trained with special treatments on emotional disturbance patients.

Other types include skin specialists, orthopedics (bone), neurologist (nerve), eurologist (kidney), and the list goes on and on as

It seems definition 2. a. from above is beginning to be used more frequently to give people the impression that a certain person, product or service knows more than others about a particular topic. The computer industry is just one example. Software called PC Doctor or spyware doctor gives the impression that these programs will help fix the problem being experienced by the patient or customer really. A bit of a play on words for sure since even the definition points to an actual person rather than a product.

We hope this article has been educational and possibly a tad enlightening regarding the various types of doctors and the online doctors trend that has taken place with the internet.