Your Mobile Medicine Cabinet

If you don't feel up to assembling your own meds, Kozarsky -- who also is co-editor of the encyclopedic "Travel Medicine" (C.V. Mosby, $155) -- suggests you buy a prepacked kit, available at such sites as http://www.travmed.com/ . (Other sources, including one for adventure travelers, are listed on the CDC site under "Illness and Injury Abroad.") A basic kit from the Travmed site containing a travel-health guidebook and such standard first-aid supplies as bandages, antibiotic cream and tweezers costs $36.95.

As for the suggestions culled from the Travel's section's online chats, Kozarsky agreed that travelers should put a note in their passports regarding any drug allergies, heart condition, diabetes, etc., to alert first responders, and include your doctor's business card. And she seconded the chatters' admonitions to carry throat lozenges (for dry throat on the airplane); condoms; cortisone cream for insect bites; a small bottle of rubbing alcohol or iodine; and sunblock that protects against both UVA and UVB radiation.

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While Reed and Kozarsky see travel medicine from a doctor's point of view, Tony Wheeler comes to the issue as one who's been there and lived to tell the tale. Wheeler and his wife, Maureen, are the founders of Lonely Planet, the travel guide series.

When asked what he packs before heading off to parts afar, Wheeler said in an e-mail, "I was about to say nothing special at all, I'm a real believer in letting things sort themselves out, I really don't believe in tossing down antibiotics at the first sign of a stomach upset. But then I thought of a few occasions where my medical kit has come into its own."

In a remote part of Tibet, he came across a pair of other travelers who both looked sick. Wheeler, figuring they suffered from the intestinal ailment giardiasis, was able to treat them because he happened to have packed the antibacterial medication Flagyl .

Stuck on an island in the Tuvalu group, Wheeler and the photographer he was traveling with got cuts from brushes with vegetation or coral. When the cuts became infected, Wheeler pulled out his store of the antibiotic erythromycin, and all was well.

When a walk in Australia turned out to be much more rugged than he'd expected, Wheeler was "very glad" to have blister treatments on hand ( moleskin and something to cut it with ).

A German brand of wound-closure strips (like the 3M-brand Steri-Strips sold in the United States) saved the day when a fellow traveler fell and got a cut above the eyebrow that was "just about bad enough that you'd have thought about stitches."

When the Wheelers' daughter, then 16, got food poisoning in Guatemala, Wheeler said he and his wife poured the electrolyte-replenisher sold overseas as Gastrolyte (similar to Gatorade) into her mouth, trying to keep her hydrated. He added that the stuff often has come in handy.

Like Wheeler, Patricia Schultz started out with a claim that she doesn't tend to pack much in the way of meds when she travels. The author of "1,000 Places to See Before You Die" (Workman Publishing, $18.95) explained, "There are so many possible scenarios out there, how do you second-guess? I, resultingly, don't."

Her favorite bit of advice: "If you're visiting a developing nation, go right to the hotel [staff]. They know about things that befall Americans or foreign guests." Not only can hotel staff help protect you from potential health threats, Schultz said, they can help get care if you do take ill. "They have reliable, English-speaking doctors on speed dial," Schultz said.

Schultz, who admitted that she winds up using Imodium "more than I like to think," said her strongest weapon is simple in principle but hard to implement: "I'm extremely careful about what I put in my mouth. What befalls you is mostly about what you eat."

Those seeking more information can check the World Health Organization's Web site at http://www.who.int/ith/en. Many universities sponsor travel health clinics; check the University of Maryland's site athttp://www.umm.edu/travel/guide.htm.

Jennifer Huget last wrote for Travel on family cruises.