TY - JOUR T1 - Women at the heart of general practice: the exhibition curator’s view JF - British Journal of General Practice JO - Br J Gen Pract SP - 230 LP - 231 DO - 10.3399/bjgp22X719369 VL - 72 IS - 718 AU - Briony Hudson Y1 - 2022/05/01 UR - http://bjgp.org/content/72/718/230.abstract N2 - On 28 September 1865, after a long struggle to jump the required hurdles, Elizabeth Garrett (later Garrett Anderson) passed the Society of Apothecaries’ licentiate exam, allowing her to join the recently instituted General Medical Council’s register and therefore practise medicine. Although Elizabeth Blackwell, born in Bristol but brought up and educated in the US, had been the first woman to feature in the inaugural register of 1859, it is the Elizabeth that she inspired, Dr Garrett Anderson, who is arguably the best-known medical woman pioneer. Elizabeth Garrett Anderson and those women doctors that followed her argued that their presence in all fields of medicine was vital, not least to encourage women patients to feel confident in coming forward to be examined and treated. General practice was their primary opportunity, especially as gaining hospital roles was incredibly difficult without access to the old-boys’ network. They were certainly not received with open arms. An editorial in The Lancet from 1873 argued: ‘Women are neither physically nor morally qualified for many of the onerous, important, and confidential duties of the general practitioner …’ A handbook for the aspiring doctor, The Young Practitioner (1890), confirmed that ‘ … the woman is, and ever will be, the angel of the sick room’. Women’s battles to break into medical careers against this domestic carer stereotype, particularly after the introduction of registration in the mid-19th century, is a well-told story.With this historical context as its backdrop, working as guest curator on the Women at the Heart of General Practice project at the RCGP has certainly been thought provoking. From my initial meeting with then RCGP Archivist Dr Sharon Messenger in July 2019, through the launch of the College’s first online exhibition in July 2021, to the installation and opening of an in-person exhibition at 30 Euston … ER -