Abstract

This paper discusses the responsibility of general practitioners who are consulted by women who have been physically injured by the men with whom they live. The paper draws on a study of 50 women who were interviewed at a refuge for battered women, and considers the help which they received, or did not receive, from their general practitioners. Such women are likely to face many difficulties: it is perhaps the essence of their problem that, because it is potentially the concern of so many people, it can so easily become the concern of nobody--except of the woman herself.