TY - JOUR T1 - Oxford textbook of primary medical care: volume 1, Principles and concepts & volume 2, Clinical management JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 562 LP - 563 VL - 54 IS - 504 AU - Kevin Barraclough Y1 - 2004/07/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/54/504/562.abstract N2 - Roger Jones, Nicky Britten, Larry Culpepper, David Gass, Richard Grol, David Mant, Chris Silagy eds) Oxford textbook of primary medical care: volume 1, Principles and concepts & volume 2, Clinical management Oxford University Press 2003 HB 1420 pp, £295.00, 0 19 263219 1What on earth is this book for? Is it just that we are trying to be grown-ups, like the physicians and surgeons? General practice encompasses most of medicine. Surely the ludicrous hubris of trying to encapsulate the subject in a book is matched only by the equally farcical notion that there can be any such thing as a practitioner of all medicine?The question of whether this book can justify its existence is closely related to the question of whether there can be such a thing as a generalist in an age of modern, technological medicine. If general practice is merely second-rate medicine, then this book is necessarily superficial froth — like a strip cartoon version of War and Peace.Fifteen years ago I made my decision to enter general practice. I told my boss of my decision. He was an elegant Italian professor of cardiology. He looked at me with the mildly perplexed air of someone who tans easily and eats guava fruit for breakfast. It was clear that, gazing down from his Olympian world of international conferences and celebrity private patients, he thought I was deranged. General practice was too far below the stars, and too close to the rugged and dusty terrain of life, to register on his radar at all. There have been plenty of times in the subsequent years, plagued by budgets and hectoring managers, when I have wondered if he was right. Consequently, it was … ER -