TY - JOUR T1 - RCGP William Pickles Lecture 2019: Training tomorrow’s doctors, 1851–2051 JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 515 LP - 516 DO - 10.3399/bjgp19X705929 VL - 69 IS - 687 AU - Terence Stephenson Y1 - 2019/10/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/69/687/515.abstract N2 - While researching William Pickles, famous for his 1939 book on epidemiology and for being the first president of the RCGP, I came across his article ‘Trends of general practice: a hundred years in a Yorkshire dale’ published in the Practitioner, 1951.1 I thought it might be of interest to look at changes in medical education over those 100 years and, potentially, the subsequent 100 years.In 1851, medical education in the UK was in a mess. The training of a practitioner in Britain in 1850 could vary from university study, to a series of courses in a provincial hospital, to broom-and-apron apprenticeship in an apothecary’s shop. The Victorian public were confused as to who was a doctor, a general practitioner (the term ‘general practitioner’ was unknown before 1800 but was firmly established by 1840), a physician, a surgeon, a barber surgeon, an apothecary, a druggist, or a snake oil merchant! The competing tensions between these conflicting practitioners are vividly drawn out in George Eliot’s novel Middlemarch, set in 1832. Dr Tertius Lydgate, who has radical ideas about infectious diseases from his overseas education, manages to fall out with both the local practitioners and the physicians brought from London.It took 16 bills and two select committees over 18 years for the 1858 Medical Act to be passed. Lord Cohen, writing in the BMJ in 1968, said that the 1858 act was the ‘pivotal event in the history of medical education in Great Britain and Ireland’.2 The act enabled the public to distinguish between qualified and unqualified practitioners, and every organisation that granted medical qualifications was represented on the new General Medical Council.Dr Pickles entered practice in Wensleydale in 1913 and practised there for 50 years. His 1951 article hints at the very comprehensive medical … ER -