The Best Medicine

‘I am one of the old school and believe that a woman’s place is within the home … However, I cannot, I will not, condone unfairness amongst females. I suggest that in due course you send your Matron a letter of thanks. You had after all a most unusual reference.’ In 1949, Staff Nurse Georgie Edwards is asked to chaperone medical students undertaking their practical exams when suddenly the penny drops. Georgie wants to learn to diagnose and treat too. Against the odds, she wins herself a place to study medicine at London’s St Bartholomew’s Hospital and she sets about becoming not a consultant ‘who sweeps by’ but a doctor who listens and cares. Yet Georgie wants to fall in love and start a family as well as have a career – is this one dream too many for a woman in the 1950s? Warm and full of humour, The Best Medicine is Georgie’s fascinating memoir of her early years as a nurse and doctor.