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The GP
History series on the social role of general practitioners between the 1940s and the 1960s. Apart from delivering children and performing minor operations, a gp also acted as a confessor, pharmacist, nurse, orderly, psychologist, social worker and financial advisor.
Young men asked their doctor whether the girl of their dreams would make a suitable wife and he also gave educational advice. People also called on his knowledge for inheritance issues or for the purchase of a plot of land. In those days, people trusted their gp implicitly. Whatever he said, went; he was god’s representative on earth. He was the gp.
