PICK, ALOIS

PICK, ALOIS (1859–1945), Austrian army medical corps general, university professor, and president of the Vienna Jewish community. He was born in Karlin near Prague, studied medicine in Prague and Vienna, and graduated in 1883. After 1887 he served as army surgeon and military hospital director; in 1891 he became head of the ward for stomach and intestinal diseases in the Vienna General Hospital. He was appointed to the position of lecturer and professor at Vienna University after 1890. During World War I he was attached to the general staff, and attained the highest rank in the army medical corps. From 1920 to 1932 he headed the Vienna Jewish community, assisted by two vice presidents of the non-nationalist and Zionist groups. His respected and kind personality helped to reconcile party differences. He wrote books and numerous articles on internal medicine, among them Vorlesungen ueber Magen und Darmkrankheiten (1895–97) and, with Adolf Hecht, Klinische Semiotik (1908), both translated into English.   During his service in Herzegovina he was the first to describe a form of pappataci fever. He also wrote plays and poetry. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Wininger, Biog, S.V.; I. Fischer, in: Biographisches Lexikon der hervorragenden Aerzte (1932). (Hugo Knoepfmacher)