The Seventh Earl of Shaftesbury 1801–1885

he became a member of the General Medical Council. He is also one of the foundation Fellows of the Royal College of General Practitioners, but it is interesting to note that the College is allowed only two of the briefest of entries in this book; nothing could illustrate more vividly the division between the LMC/BMA/GMSC world of medical politics and the apolitical RCGP. But this book is not, and the author would be the first to concede that it did not set out to be, a comprehensive history of the general practitioner. It is in fact a memoir of the author's personal involvement in the politics of medicine, of his life as a most distinguished general practitioner in Winchester, and an exposition of his firmly held views on the way that this complex, arduous, and rapidly changing branch of medicine should be practised. He writes with vigour as if he were talking to you, and is seldom worried by doubts or uncertainties. It is a valuable memoir, particularly for the future historian who will, we suspect, find a lot that is hard to understand about general practice during the period following the second world war. He will need to untangle the way that general practitioners displayed in their work a mixture of frustration and enthusiasm, of irritability and deep affection for their patients, of almost paranoid distrust of government and the Ministry of Health, and of continual fear of loss of clinical freedom; and yet, in spite of these latter fears, he will note the rarity with which the leaders could obtain any agreement on political attitudes or action; he will also note the frequent touchiness, insecurity, and hypersensitivity to outside criticism co-existing with a surprising willingness on the part of many to change their patterns of behaviour and even indulge in searching self-examination of motives and attitudes. He may conclude that here was a group of medical practitioners whose attitude to their work could change from love to hate and back again several times a day, and who loved to be loved by their patients but were repeatedly surprised to find that most of the time they really were. The future historian, and indeed, anyone today who is interested in the practice of medicine, will find this memoir helps to unravel these contradictions and is therefore a much more valuable book than it would have been if the author …