Andrew Papanikitas is Deputy Editor of the BJGP.
‘Travel broadens the mind’ is one of those sayings with an origin that is hard to pin down. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations just lists it as a proverb,1 along with a wry gloss by GK Chesterton in 1921, ‘They say that travel broadens the mind; but you must have the mind.’2 Travel, or ‘being there’, has a wider resonance when we consider the development of wisdom and experience. Chesterton’s witticism makes me think of William Osler’s exhortation that medical students ‘make the lesson of each case tell on your education. The value of experience is not in seeing much but in seeing wisely.’3 In Life and Times this issue, we aim to expand your horizons.
Look yonder
“In Life and Times this issue, we aim to expand your horizons.”
Alex Burrell demonstrates the value of looking up from the daily grind and taking an active interest in your professional surroundings. He reviews articles on violence prevention in primary care, patient perspectives on asthma management, and barriers to diagnosis and management of hepatitis C, as well as looking at how general practice contributes to the undergraduate curriculum.4 Burrell’s approach to mind-broadening is (I hope) academically contagious. Tim Senior extends the idea that slavish adherence to the beaten track may not get you where you need to be and that widespread use of quality measures that depend on adherence to guidelines will make the quality of care worse overall.5 We also need to be able to see what is absent both within the primary care setting and in the space between general and specialist practice. Neil Evans teaches us that these gaps are not theoretical for patients in need and represent a source of human tragedy.6
Being there, in the moment
The unique selling point of travel lies in being there. Rebecca Quinn brings experience to us through poetry — The Art of Noticing and Systems Update invite us to see through a GP’s eyes and experience (respectively) the consultation and the ideas that influence it.7 Pedro Elston and colleagues discuss the duties of GP supervisors in reviewing GP residents’ reflections on an e-portfolio. In particular, they caution care in using automated processes to check for plagiarised and artificial intelligence (AI) ghost-written entries, when a false accusation can be profoundly harmful.8
From the sublime to the eerily plausible
Terry Kemple reviews an encyclical by Pope Leo XIV. The central message of the encyclical is that humanity, with all its greatness and weakness, must never be replaced or surpassed in value by AI. Technology should remain a tool that serves human beings, not a force that defines or controls them.9 Will Norman takes us around the 61st Art Biennale in Venice and finds the world’s controversies concentrated. We are invited to consider whether countries whose leaders were indicted for war crimes should be allowed to use the soft power of culture at the world’s biggest visual art festival.10 I settle into a tech-thriller, The Quantum Gene, by Brian McKinstry. This is a plot involving geniuses, billionaires, governments, spies, academic skullduggery, corruption, and bioterrorism … eerily plausible.11
“The unique selling point of travel lies in being there.”
Seeing how reality is constructed
Simon Absil explores the meeting of minds in the translation of knowledge from the academy to the field. He proposes that Aristotle’s theory of rhetoric may offer a useful framework for understanding how evidence, expertise, and patient values are brought together in clinical practice. How we adopt new medical ideas may rely not just on logical argument, but the credibility of the arguer and how they appeal to the emotions of their audience. Ben Hoban transports us into the future coffee house of near-retirement as a lens through which to think about the meaning of general practice.12 Coffee and medicine both have artisanal and industrial aspects, and Hoban offers the independent coffee house as a place where we can see the shadows of what is true and meaningful in primary health care.13 To my mind, Hoban’s coffee shop has parallels with Plato’s allegorical cave, where the occupants rely on the shadows on the wall to know what the outside is like.14
Marcel Proust offers a pithy quote from his 1923 story La Prisonnière, ‘The only true voyage, the only bath in the Fountain of Youth, would be not to visit strange lands but to possess other eyes, to see the universe through the eyes of another, of a hundred others, to see the hundred universes that each of them sees, that each of them is; and this we do, with great artists; with artists like these we do really fly from star to star.’ We can travel with our authors, and be transformed by what they teach us. Whether through direct experience, through learning, or through seeing wisely, we can see with other eyes.15
References
1. Knowles E. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. 6th edn. Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 2004; p633.
2. Knowles E. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. 6th edn. Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 2004; p217.
3. Sokol D. The Ethical Clinician: Practical Lessons from the Bedside and Courtroom. London: Self-published, 2026.
4. Burrell A. Yonder: Violence prevention in primary care, patient perspectives on asthma management, GP curricula in medical schools, and hepatitis C. Br J Gen Pract 2026; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp26X746457.
5. Senior T. The not-a-paradox of primary care. Br J Gen Pract 2026; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp26X746517.
6. Evans N. When patients disappear between systems. Br J Gen Pract 2026; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp26X746433.
7. Quinn R. Poems: The Art of Noticing and Systems Update. Br J Gen Pract 2026; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp26X746469.
8. Elston P, Jones I, Miles S, et al. AI detection in GP training: a hidden burden on supervisors. Br J Gen Pract 2026; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp26X746445.
9. Kemple T. Books: Magnifica humanitas: On Safeguarding the Human Person in the Time of Artificial Intelligence. Br J Gen Pract 2026; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp26X746493.
10. Norman W. In Minor Keys: the 61st Venice Art Biennale. Br J Gen Pract 2026; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp26X746481.
11. Papanikitas A. Books: The Quantum Gene. Br J Gen Pract 2026; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp26X746505.
12. Absil S. Logos, ethos, pathos: evidence-based medicine through the lens of rhetoric. Br J Gen Pract 2026; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp26X746409.
13. Hoban B. Overheard at a possible future café. Br J Gen Pract 2026; DOI: https://doi.org/10.3399/bjgp26X746421.
14. Plato. The Republic. London: Penguin Classics, 2007.
15. Proust M. In Search of Lost Time: Volume 5: the Prisoner and the Fugitive. London: Penguin Modern Classics, 2003.
