William Norman Pickles (1885–1969) was, for most of his life, a general practitioner in the village of Aysgarth, Wensleydale in the North of England, a relatively remote area in the early part of this century with many of the doctors' visits made on horseback or on an ancient motorcycle. The story of Pickles' life, how he became, among other honours, the first President of the Royal College of General Practitioners, is told in Pemberton's book Will Pickles of Wensleydale. It may seem curious that Pickles, a country GP, should rank with other great men in epidemiology: Jenner who worked on smallpox, Budd on typhoid fever, Snow on cholera, yet it was the remoteness of his practice combined with his own acute observation and accurate recording that enabled him to contribute so significantly to epidemiology.