What are some good search engines and web sites for searching on
topics that a first or second year medical student would need to
study?

Hi,

Your #1 starting point on the web, besides your own medical school
library website, is the U.S. National Library of Medicine:
< http://www.nlm.nih.gov/ >

--  includes PubMed, which provides searchable access to over 11
million MEDLINE citations published in over 4300 biomedical journals
back to the mid-1960's and additional life science journals. PubMed
includes links to many sites providing full text articles and other
related resources.

-- includes Entrez, a retrieval system for searching several linked
databases including GenBank, Protein Sequence, Genome, and Online
Mendelian Inheritance in Man

-- includes LinkOut, a "feature of Entrez designed to provide users
with links from PubMed and other Entrez databases to a wide variety of
relevant web-accessible online resources, including full-text
publications, biological databases, consumer health information,
research tools, and more."

-- includes quick links to the National Center for Biotechnology
Information subject areas
< http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/Sitemap/brief.html .

Other websites worth your attention include:

-- Free Medical Journals.com which provides free access to such
prestigious publications as the British Medical Journal, New England
Journal of Medicine, Journal of Cell Biology, Journal of Virology. 
Some journals allow free access only after 1-6 months from publication
while some allow immediate access.
< http://www.freemedicaljournals.com/ > 

This site also organizes its almost 1,000 free journals by speciality:
< http://www.freemedicaljournals.com/htm/special.htm >

-- eMedicine World Medical Library with the "largest collection of
medical review articles in the world"  Peer reviewed, the articles are
also listed by specialty.
< http://www.emedicine.com/ > 

A couple of handy reference sites include
-- Merck Manuals Online 
< http://www.merck.com/pubs/ >

-- Physician's Desk Reference Online 
< http://www.pdr.net/HomePage_template.jsp >

And, although it doesn't really answer your question, the University
of Hawaii has a site entitled Resources for Medical Students you might
find useful.
< http://hml.org/WWW/students.html >

These should help.  Thanks for asking

The answer was a little more general than I expected - not really
aimed at a first or second year medical student, but aimed at medical
research in general.  For example, the pub-med site is probably better
for grad students.  It is good for looking up research articles. 
First and second year students are more often trying to understand
core concepts.  The resources listed on the NIH site, like mendellian
genetics and protein sequences is more in the phD category than med
school.  The comments - especially from tehuti-ga - were much more on
the mark.

Try http://www.faganfinder.com/med/ , it includes search tools and
links.

I will take a look at the websites listed in the answer and may add
them to the URL listed above.

Note: self promotion

You might be interested in the following: 
Online educational resources for medical students:
http://academic.med.ohio-state.edu/onlinelearning/

http://www.flash-med.com/ Flash-Med is designed for medical students,
resident physicians and medical professionals as a tool for learning
and reviewing medical information.

Medical Education Bookmarks:
http://newmedia.doit.wisc.edu/staff/wolf/meded.html

Hello there,

I had these sites bookmarked in my medical favorites file.  I hope
they will be of some use.

http://www.docguide.com/news/content.nsf/MedicalResourcesWeb?OpenForm&id=48dde4a73e09a969852568880078c249&cond=Medical%20reference%20sites
http://www.drpen.com/resourcesPrimary.php 
http://cancerweb.ncl.ac.uk/cgi-bin/omd?action=Home&query= 
http://www.eskeletons.org/ (graphic intensive)
http://www.labcorp.com/datasets/labcorp/html/chapter/chap1.htm 
http://www.ailments.com/ 

It couldn't hurt to have these bookmarked also:
http://www.mdexpress.com
http://www.epocrates.com
 
Regards,
V

As well as everyone else's tips, try a site from India:
www.healthlibrary.com
Its particularly good on links to full text books (mind you the site
map is confusing, so you need to browse... but worth it)

Try emedicine.com