ABSTRACT
The history of general practice (GP) is full of pioneers, mostly unrecorded and unsung, who made a difference where they worked for the best of motives and with no thought of recognition or reward. A few pioneers are identifiable, however, because of what they wrote or were written about them and the influence their examples have had either directly on practice or in showing what it is possible for general practitioners to do. One of the first GP researchers was Edward Jenner, a country doctor who practiced in Berkeley, Gloucestershire and was a member of the Gloucestershire Medical Society which met at the Fleece Inn in Rodborough to present and discuss their conjectures and findings. Born in Scone, Perthshire and a graduate of the University of Edinburgh, James Mackenzie practiced for many years as a GP in Burnley, Lancashire where many of his patients worked in the cotton mills and lived in very poor housing conditions.
