General practice and the College: 60 years on

摘要

In 1952 the state of general practice in the UK and the rest of the world was dire. Specialist medicine was advancing rapidly, Lord Moran would soon describe GPs as having ‘fallen off the ladder’, and Sir Arthur Thompson stated that general practice was ‘outmoded’. GPs had no training for their job, no body of scientific knowledge, no journal or college of their own. There was not one professor of general practice in the world and one-third of new GPs left their practices, many emigrating.