ABSTRACT
Going to the doctor is a common experience, and one which has a history. Medical poverty, well described by Bernard Shaw in The Doctor's Dilemma diminished rapidly after the Lloyd George Insurance Act of 1911, and disappeared after 1948 with the National Health Service. British patients would usually see the doctor either in their own home, or the doctor's front parlor. As most fee-earning doctors work hard, it is difficult for them to understand that in any fee-paid service, public needs are greater than presented personal demands. The doctor sat on the left side of the bed, his right foot often striking a chamber pot, ringing a cheerful note to start the consultation. Sentimental rhetoric about family doctors won't wash with today's public; there is little evidence that British or any other general practitioners ever gave the priority to continuity of care or knowledge of families which provided their defensive rhetoric over the last hundred years.
