Comments | little_details: Education and training of GPs in Britain in the 1920s

wwmrsweasleydo in little_details

Education and training of GPs in Britain in the 1920s

Apr 05, 2012 13:27

I am trying to find out what the education and training was in Britain for a doctor who was going to go into General Medical Practice in the 1920s. From the information which I have managed to find through Googling various combinations of '1920s', 'GP', 'General Practitioner', 'education', 'training', 'British', 'medical', 'doctor', 'Britain', and ( Read more... )

~medicine: medical education, uk: history (misc), 1920-1929, ~medicine: historical

Comments 14

jayb111 April 5 2012, 14:49:53 UTC

It's a bit later than your period, but for general background you might want to try Richard Gordon's 'Doctor in the House', a fictionalised, humorous account of his own time as a medical student. I expect there are plenty of cheap second hand copies on Amazon. (Don't bother with the later books or the films as they move further away from the autobiographical element.)

What also comes to mind is the chapter in Dorothy L Sayers' 'Whose Body' when Lord Peter interviews a medical student.

janewilliams20 April 5 2012, 16:37:09 UTC

Yes, I was going to suggest Richard Gordon unitl I checked what period they were set in.

wwmrsweasleydo April 5 2012, 18:26:18 UTC

Yes. I get the idea from what I've managed to find that things changed quite a lot after the formation of the NHS, so it's before that that I really need info on. I may be wrong, but I can't even get hold of that much information!

Gordon is very funny as I remember!

wwmrsweasleydo April 5 2012, 18:23:08 UTC

I read Doctor In The House and saw the earlier films as a teenager. I might have another look. The Sayers book sounds interesting. It's ages since I read anything of hers, too. Thanks for the suggestions!

(The comment has been removed)

wwmrsweasleydo April 5 2012, 18:19:17 UTC

Thanks so much. I'm in the UK, but I'll try to find that DVD. I did find the book that accompanies it on Amazon uk, though and it's being shipped to me from the US for £5. Even if it doesn't have exactly what I need it'll be good background reading for the character and looks really interesting. So thank you very much for that suggestion!

duckodeath April 5 2012, 23:18:19 UTC

Try The Citadel by A.J. Cronin ( ... )

wwmrsweasleydo April 6 2012, 10:21:46 UTC

That sounds perfect. Thank you so much! Brilliant.

I've ordered me a lovely second hand hardback copy off Amazon for £3.50. Not bad at all.

I'm looking forward to reading this. Thanks so much.

wwmrsweasleydo April 26 2012, 13:41:44 UTC

I'm reading this now and it's brilliant, perfect. Thanks so much for pointing me towards The Citadel.

duckodeath April 26 2012, 23:05:55 UTC

I am very glad I could help. I knew as soon as I read your question that The Citadel would be a great reference for period medical detail, I'm just surprised more people aren't familiar with it.

thismaz April 6 2012, 07:39:49 UTC

Have you tried googling "History of Medicine"?
I found a number of links to Ug and Pg courses that might give you some info.
Birkbeck and the OU do Ug courses in the history of medicine
and 13 run pg courses - http://www.hotcourses.com/uk-courses/postgraduate-History-of-Medicine-courses-in-the-UK/hc2_search.adv_col_do/16180339/90904/search_category/DB.72/qualification/L/town_city/United+Kingdom/page.htm
There is also British Society for the History of Medicine - http://www.bshm.org.uk/

wwmrsweasleydo April 6 2012, 10:45:53 UTC

Thanks. I'll have a good look around those. I thought that I had googled that, but maybe not! That's a lot of information. Thanks so much.

syntinen_laulu April 6 2012, 09:41:51 UTC

I actually work in vocational training for general practictioners - which in Britain is now a 3-year course following qualification, and probably going to get longer in the near future - and it's a remarkably recent phenomenon; there are still many older GPs in practice today who were able to walk out of medical school (not university) clutching their degree and take up practice straight away. It used to be something you did if you didn't want to, couldn't afford to, or weren't bright enough to specialise; it has only recently been seen as a highly demanding specialism in itself.

wwmrsweasleydo April 6 2012, 09:51:05 UTC

Thanks. On the one hand that's great for my story, on the other hand I'm a bit nervous about seeing older GPs now, and it might explain a few things from when I was a kid...

syntinen_laulu April 6 2012, 17:51:48 UTC

Don't panic - for many years now they have been made to do (and produce the evidence of) continuing professional education, so they have to keep up to date!

GP qualification was always a bit odd, because the original GPs in the early 19th century weren't doctors at all - they were guys who had qualified both as apothecaries and as surgeons, both of which were lowly trades which you learned by apprenticeship, whereas doctors were gentlemen who had been to university. (For this reason, they refused to do anything messy or practical; as recently as 1834, the English Royal College of Physicians (the predecessor of today’s British Medical Association, the representative body of the medical profession in Britain) gave as its official stance that “Obstetrics, being a branch of manual labour, is foreign to the habits of gentlemen of an enlarged academical education”. Which translates as “We physicians all have university degrees, which qualify us to diagnose and prescribe. We might go as far as to take a pulse or listen to your chest but ( ... )