ABSTRACT
Long before social workers came into being, patients consulted their doctors not only about physical illness but about their social and emotional problems. Until comparatively recent times most of the medicines dispensed had few pharmocologically curative properties, hence psycho-social remedies must have been a vital ingredient of the physician’s art. But the social or emotional malaise underlying physical complaints often went unrecognised by either patient or doctor. Since then a succession of official reports has sought to clarify the functions of the modern general practitioner, both in relation to the medical profession as a whole and in relation to other helping professions. The recent reports of the working party of the British Medical Association Planning Unit on Primary Medical Care and the report of the Royal College of General Practitioners have stressed once more the generality of general practice and its substantial concern with social pathology.
