Education
He attended Leeds Grammar School and then Leeds Medical School (Yorkshire College) in 1902. He graduated Bachelor of Medicine Bachelor of Science London in 1910 and Doctor of Medicine in 1918.
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William Pickles
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He was the first president of the Royal College of General Practitioners. William was one of six sons of John Jagger Pickles, a general practitioner, and Lucy Pickles. All six children went into medicine.
In his third year, he proceeded with his clinical studies at the Leeds General Infirmary, qualifying as a licentiate of the Society of Apothecaries (Local Search Association) in 1909.
He served as resident obstetric officer at the Infirmary, followed by a series of temporary jobs and locums. Pickles began working in Leeds, but in 1912 he visited Aysgarth as a locum for Doctor Edward Hime.
Later that year he served as a ship"s doctor on voyage to Calcutta, and on his return to England, resumed working for Doctor Hime as a second assistant in either 1912 or 1913. In 1913, Doctor Hime left Wensleydale and sold the practice to Pickles and Doctor Dean Dunbar for £3000.
Dunbar, from the Aysgarth, Wensleydale, surgery assumed the position of Medical Officer for Health at the workhouse and was also on the Board of Guardians of the workhouse at Bainbridge.
Pickles was the second assistant to Dunbar. At the time, the practise in Aysgarth served eight villages and a population of 4,267. When the First World War broke out in 1914, Pickles joined the Royal Navy as ship"s doctor in the Atlantic and remained in service until the end of the war.
In 1919, he published his first article about Vincent"s disease, from his experiences during the war.
In 1930, he published an account in the British Medical Journal of an epidemic of catarrhal jaundice in Wensleydale the previous year, in which he traced the entire epidemic affecting 250 people to a single child, and also established the long incubation of the disease of between 26 and 35 days. His seminal text Epidemiology in Country Practice appeared in 1937, touting the benefits of being a general practitioner to study diseases.
Pickles became the first President of the Royal College of General Practitioners in 1967. He died on 2 March 1969.
