TY - JOUR T1 - <em>BJGP</em> Library: Bodies of Light and Signs For Lost Children JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 541 LP - 541 DO - 10.3399/bjgp15X687085 VL - 65 IS - 639 AU - Trisha Greenhalgh Y1 - 2015/10/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/65/639/541.abstract N2 - Bodies of Light Sarah Moss Granta, 2015, PB, 320 pp, £7.99, 978-1847089090Signs for Lost Children Sarah Moss Granta, 2015, PB, 368 pp, £12.99, 978-1783781058There’s a lot of rubbish written about work–life balance. The flawed assumption is that there is ‘work’ and there is ‘[family] life’, and the well-adjusted doctor keeps these cleanly separate. We all know it’s not like that. Difficulties with work colleagues or patients may be readily explained by what is going on at home (for us or them).More positively, events in the family (illness, hardship, a journey) can inspire a productive and fulfilling career in a particular medical specialty. This is the central theme in two recent novels set in the 1860s to 1880s, an era when British women were struggling to gain the right to learn and practise medicine. The UK’s first female medical graduate, Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, qualified in 1865; although both the Society of Apothecaries and the British Medical Association promptly banned any further women from joining their ranks. It was not until 1876 that the new Medical Act … ER -