According to the latest figures from the DREES, France today has fewer general practitioners than at the beginning of the 1980s, despite a significant increase in population since then. Between 2015 and 2025, the number of general practitioners decreased by 2%, while the number of specialists increased by 15%, indicating a continuous decline in general medicine since 2012. The creation of the specialties of emergency medicine and allergology in 2017 has statistically shifted general practitioners to other categories without reducing their actual activity. The medical density reached 346 doctors per 100,000 inhabitants in 2025, but the feminization of the profession and new ways of practicing modify the real availability of practitioners on the ground. The myth of mass retirements does not hold up to the DREES figures. Since 2010, the curve is reversed: fewer general practitioners than there were forty years ago. The numerus clausus, often cited as a cause, is considered a wrong track by some analyses. Medical time, feminization, salarization: the real mechanism of decline. As of January 1, 2025, the DREES recorded 237,200 doctors in activity in France, a 1.6% increase compared to the previous year. However, this overall figure masks a much more contrasting reality according to the specialties. General medicine included exactly 100,019 active practitioners in 2025, compared to 101,935 in 2015. A slow erosion, but continuous, that draws a fundamental trend much more structural than a simple demographic effect linked to age. A DREES study from 2004 already projected a gradual decrease in the number of general practitioners, less marked however than that announced for certain specialties such as ophthalmology or psychiatry. The numerus clausus is often pointed out as the main responsible for the current shortage. The DREES projections for 2025-2030 anticipated indeed a drop of about 30% in the number of liberal general practitioners compared to the population, due to the lack of a sufficient increase in this quota. However, reducing the problem to this single variable would be misleading, because a significant part of the accounting decrease is actually explained by a very different factor: the creation, in 2017, of two new specialties, emergency medicine and allergology, previously practiced by general practitioners. In practice, practitioners who practiced yesterday under the label "general medicine" now fall into a distinct statistical category, without their actual number of patients followed necessarily changing. A historical demographic fact illuminates part of the phenomenon: in 2025, women have become the majority among doctors in France. This shift, long anticipated, marks a major demographic change within the medical profession. We also observe changes in the ways doctors practice, which can modify the availability of general practitioners on the ground, independently of their raw number. The national medical density now stands at 346 doctors per 100,000 inhabitants in 2025, compared to 341 in 2024. A real progress, but much slower than that observed during the decades 1980 to 2000, a period during which the profession was experiencing continuous and sustained growth. The territorial gaps remain extremely marked across the country. Some rural, suburban, or overseas areas continue to suffer from a chronic shortage of practitioners, despite the efforts made by the Regional Health Agencies and local authorities to attract new doctors. This phenomenon, long confined to the most isolated territories, continues to create tensions in some areas previously less affected. The continued decrease in active general practitioners since 2010 draws a phenomenon much more complex than a simple equation between the number of trained students and retirements. Reassignment of specialties, sociological transformation of the profession, different career choices: all these mechanisms intertwine to produce this silent but real decline. A finding that invites reconsidering the levers of action beyond the single numerus clausus, now replaced by a more flexible numerus apertus, to hope to reverse the trend durably in the coming years.