Over several years working in a district general hospital as a physician with a cardiological interest, the common problems in this field are clearer. This knowledge has come through normal out-patient clinic referrals, care of in-patients, and by working in a domiciliary consultative capacity. The problems that concern family physicians nowadays are somewhat different from the problems of two or three decades ago. The accent now is very much on the implications of hypertensive and ischaemic heart disease. Rheumatic fever is rarely seen, though its sequelae may still be discovered. Hence the...