Intensive care and its development is part of an evolutionary process in the general organization of hospital medical practice. No new disease process is involved, and this alone should be sufficient to support our view that intensive care does not call for the creation of a new specialty. The experience, skill, and knowledge of anaesthetists qualify them to fill vital roles in intensive care, but it is of paramount importance that in doing so they should neither neglect nor abdicate from their own special field of medical work from which their unique expertise derives.