Gene McGregor was born in 1916, six years after Abraham
Flexner published his reforming report on the weak condition of medical education
in the United States and 3 years after the founding of the first medical specialty
organization, the American College of Surgeons. His life has spanned a period
of enormous change in the science and practice of US medicine, most of which
he has observed from the vantage point of Lisbon, New Hampshire—his
birthplace and the site of his medical practice of some 40 years. Spare of
words and direct in response, Dr McGregor's alertness and power of recall
belie his more than 80 years. He sits comfortably on the porch of his green-shuttered
white house on Main Street in Lisbon, recalling his days in practice, some
14,000 of them. He apologizes for the regular interruptions in his reflections
caused by the gearing up of lumber trucks passing noisily out Main Street
and by his occasional trips inside the house caused, he explains, by diuretics.