An emerging discipline

Until recently, that branch of medicine calling itself general practice seems to have been neglected by both historians and by the medical profession itself. I hope this series of articles will stimulate an interest in the history of general practice, not only in Australia but elsewhere as well. The articles will look at the ways in which general practice developed as a discipline and how our discipline has changed over the past 150 years. This first paper in the series looks at the emergence of British general practice and how it affected the origin of the Australian general practitioner.