Mystery, Iona Heath reminds us, is a collective noun for doctors, as well as an archaic term meaning trade, profession, or calling. Heath wrote The Mystery of General Practice at a time of familiar crisis for UK family medicine. Major, neoliberal, market-driven reform had been introduced to primary health care and precipitated a crisis of morale and a fall in applications to train in the speciality. There was a feeling that politicians and health service planners had failed to understand the nature of general practice and its purpose in relation to health. Nature and purpose are the keystones of consent to medical treatment — the what and the why of any proposed intervention.

The articles in this month’s Life and Times address the nature and purpose of general practice in the UK, in a way that is helpful to policymakers, practitioners, and the …