William Lloyd Aycock (WLA), 1889-1951, Associate Professor of Preventive Medicine and Hygiene at Harvard Medical School and the Harvard School of Public Health, specialized in epidemiology and communicable diseases research, including polio and leprosy.
WLA was born in Georgia in 1889, and received the MD from the University of Louisville in 1914. He became Instructor of Bacteriology at the New York Postgraduate Medical School and Hospital and diagnostician at the New York State Health Department prior to World War I. From 1917-1919, he served as a first lieutenant in the US Army, directing a base hospital laboratory, and as epidemiologist at the Central Laboratories of the American Expeditionary Forces. WLA directed the research laboratory of the Vermont State Board of Health from 1919 to 1931. He joined the Department of Preventive Medicine and Hygiene at Harvard Medical School in 1923 and began work in the same field at the Harvard School of Public Health in 1926. In 1928, he became an assistant professor in both departments.
WLA directed research for the Harvard Infantile Paralysis Commission from 1923 to 1951. During and after World War II, he was a consultant to both the US Department of War and the Office of the US Surgeon General on epidemiological issues. WLA conducted field research on leprosy in the Territory of Hawaii from 1949-1951 and on streptococcal and rheumatic fever in Newport, RI from 1950-51. WLA’s focus on the subclinical aspects of polio led to his thesis that polio was much more widespread than initially assumed and its paralytic form was the extreme, even atypical, manifestation of the disease. Comparative aspects of various contagious diseases and emphasis on host factors marked much of his research. He consulted with public health departments, research laboratories and institutes, including the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, in the United States, Canada and Great Britain, and served as the President of the American Epidemiological Society in 1943. WLA died of post-operative complications in 1951.
From the guide to the Papers, 1919-1951., (Francis A.Countway Library of Medicine. Center for the History of Medicine.)
