THE LONGEST ART (A G.P.'s Story)

 Kenneth Lane, George Allen and Unwin 1969.

After more than twenty years in a busy general practice Dr. Kenneth Lane has a right to claim, from personal experience, that the life of a family doctor can be challenging and highly rewarding in a great many ways.

In this well written book he illustrates how a general practitioner has to switch constantly from trivial complaints to serious and dramatic illness and emergencies; and how many events in the life of his patients tend to become his own personal concern. Every doctor is sometimes unfairly blamed and sometimes unduly praised – "on balance we strike about even".

When discussing modern developments in National-Health-Service general practice in Britain he says that the introduction of appointment systems was, in his opinion, the turning point for improvement. He agrees with many others about the importance of general-practitioner hospital beds, although he offers no solution to the problem of how to provide enough of these in the winter months, when upper-respiratory infections are common, without having them empty in the summer when far fewer are needed.

Many people will not agree with the author when he deplores the modern tendency for some keen family doctors in group practices to develop special clinical interests. Throughout the book his own particular interests and antipathies are clearly portrayed. A great comparison then for anyone with the remotest connections to general practice today, with how it was only thirty five years ago.

Other than for having no dust jacket, and for the bottom of the stick down sheet on the inside of the front cover having been torn away in an arc, approximately 10cm long x 3cm high, the book is in good condition. Nostalgia for some, perhaps a different approach to age-old problems for others.