The G.P.s

General practitioners feel, with good reason, that neither the public nor the medical profession treats them with the respect they deserve. In the American Medical Association, general practitioners outnumber specialists two to one (100,000 to 50,000), but until recently they had no national organization of their own. In Cincinnati last week 2,518 doctors showed up at the first annual scientific assembly of the 21-month-old American Academy of General Practice.

The G.P.s invited 20 specialists to talk to them, crowded in to listen with an enthusiasm that amazed veteran conventiongoers. At every session for four days they filled the Netherland Plaza's meeting rooms ahead of time, stayed late, kept the speakers answering questions afterward.

The G.P.s wanted it understood that a general practitioner does not necessarily mean a country doctor. The convention issue of General Practice News criticized the A.M.A.'s annual award for the outstanding general practitioner of the year. There have been two winners thus far, and both practiced in rural areas. Why not drop the award, the G.P. News suggested, or frankly give it to an outstanding "rural practitioner"?

That Tired Feeling. Maya's famed Internist Dr. Walter Clement Alvarez gave the doctors some unconventional advice: "Often what you find in a patient has nothing to do with the case." In trying to explain why a patient has "that old tired feelin','' he said, the doctor might turn up some soft gallstones, a slightly low basal metabolism rate or a few intestinal parasites. But the doctor should remember that things like that cannot cause the great fatigue the patient complains about. The commonest cause of abnormal weariness, he said, is a "nervous breakdown," a term that may include neurosis or psychosis. A lot of operations could be avoided, Alvarez thinks, if the doctor asked his patient a simple three-word question: "Are you happy?" The answer might give the clue to an unhappy home or job that led to the nervous breakdown. No out-&-out Freudian, Alvarez believes that a normal man can get a nervous breakdown from overwork. A smart general practitioner, he said, can often find out what's wrong in five minutes' talk with the patient's relatives or business associates.

Help from a Frog. The doctors were deeply interested in a simple test for pregnancy, presented by the White Cross Hospital of Columbus, Ohio and Denison University of Granville, Ohio. It involved no new scientific principles, but was an improved application of old ones. Tests using rabbits are slow, may take two days; frogs or toads imported from South America or South Africa are expensive ($4 to $10 apiece). Urine from a pregnant woman injected into a common male leopard frog (Rana pipiens) causes emission of spermatozoa. The test has also proved valuable for finding out whether, in doubtful cases, a miscarriage is inevitable. The test can be done in two hours, in a doctor's office, and is 98% accurate.

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