ABSTRACT
This chapter deals with the relation of the British Medical Journal (BMJ) to general practitioners from 1840 to 1990. In an era when the placebo effect, exerted chiefly through time and trouble taken with each case, was the only weapon available, doctors had to believe in what they did. For treatment of the impoverished multitude to be credible, it had to involve time and trouble comparable at least with that commanded by the wealthy few. Throughout the rest of the nineteenth century, the Journal reported a steady flow of professional meetings documenting these grievances, and deputations drawing them to the attention of sympathetic members of parliament and ministers, or attempting to drive harder bargains with the increasingly centralized insurance companies which were gradually taking over the mutual aid and friendly societies which financed the clubs. Both in 1912 and in 1948, doctors and their journal acted in a social and political context impossible to ignore.
