A short account of the history of medicine leads on to Jamaican medical care in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In the twentieth century the demand for local autonomy increased steadily. When the University College of the West Indies opened, the local practitioners welcomed it enthusiastically. This account ends as the University became autonomous in 1962.
John S.R. Golding was Professor Emeritus, Faculty of Medicine, University of the West Indies, Mona, Kingston, Jamaica. He died in March 1996.