Organization and function of an accident flying squad.

In March 1962, using data obtained from official sources overseas, I published (Seale, 1962) the estimate that 600 graduates of the medical schools of Great Britain and Ireland had emigrated annually during the five years 1956-60. There was some criticism of the accuracy of this estimate at the time which, according to the British Medical 7ournal (1964), amounted to " a remarkable explosion of wrath." In May 1964, with new data also obtained from official sources overseas, more precise figures were published and the estimate made that in the 10 years 1954-63 5,000 doctors born and trained in the British Isles (4,000 from Great Britain and over 1,000 from Ireland) had emigrated-the equivalent of onequarter of the output of the medical schools during the 10-year period (Seale, 1964). These figures did not differ substantially from those published two years before, and in the paper the series of fallacies was demonstrated in the reasoning used by the former Minister of Health when he purported to prove that emigration on anything like this scale could not have occurred. Two months later, in July 1964, the results of a comprehensive two-year study undertaken by Dr. (now Professor) Brian Abel-Smith and Miss Kathleen Gales (1964a), of the London school of Economics, were published. This was an independent university-based survey financed by the Nuflield Provincial Hospitals Trust and carried out with the approval of the Ministry of Health and the British Medical Association (Brit. med. 7., 1962). It was undertaken because of the controversy aroused by my original emigration paper. Abel-Smith and Gales traced the 1962 country of residence of each doctor in a random sample of 5 % of those whose names first appeared in the Home Medical Register in the years 1925 to 1959. From their sample they estimated that over 6,100 doctors trained in medical schools in Great Britain and Ireland left the British Isles in the 10 years 1952-61 and were still abroad in July 1962. Their estimate of the number of doctors who were both born and trained in Great Britain alone who left during the 10 years up to 1963 and were still abroad was, they wrote, very close to my estimate of 4,000. They said that the annual loss of about 400 British-born doctors, nearly one-quarter of the output of the medical schools, can be regarded as a serious matter, and " we are in full agreement with Dr. Seale that the scale of medical emigration has been substantially greater than *has apparently been believed by the Ministry of Health " (AbelSmith and Gales, 1964b). The study by Abel-Smith and Gales covered medical emigration during the period from the second world war until July 1962. They stated: " The number of doctors going abroad has been steadily increasing up to the period 1958-60. The figures of those leaving Great Britain in the last period, 1961-2, suggests a change in the trend, although it must be noted that