To be effective, medical reading should be regular and systematic. This is not always easy. The general practitioner has an exacting life and, apart from his work, many demands are made on him. However, if he wishes to read, he will find the time to devote to it. He may read from text-books or from journals.

Members of the British Medical Association in Australia receive both The Medical Journal of Australia and The British Medical Journal. In the pages of these journals most of the newer aspects of medical science are discussed and abstracts from journals of other countries are published.

In urging medical practitioners, . . . to look to their journals for their reading matter, we would suggest that each practitioner should subscribe to at least one extra journal. He would then be in a position to help his neighbour as well as himself, and he might initiate a seminar or study circle for the exchange and discussion of journals.

From time to time the statement is made that the day of the general practitioner is done, that so much is being filched from him by the major and the minor specialist on the one hand and by the governmental octopus on the other that little will remain or even now remains for him. It will be a sorry day for medicine and for the public if this should ever happen. . . .

There will always be need for the man who takes the whole of medicine for his province, and he will always be the most honoured and honourable of its servants. The general practitioner can best preserve his status by remaining a student all his days.

MJA 1936; II: 501-502 [editorial]