Sir George Pickering (1904–1982)

I first met George Pickering when I was a medical student in the Anatomy Department at St Mary's Hospital Medical School. He brought an amputated leg which had arteriovenous anastomoses within it, leading to overgrowth of the limb and subsequently to amputation to try and correct the high cardiac output and failure which it caused. He had injected the arteries with a barium paste and wanted someone to try and find the connections by simple dissection. As I liked dissection, I volunteered, and though I was unable to show any major connections, which were presumably at arteriolar-venular level, it was to mark the beginning of a very long apprenticeship.