George Pratt Yule, medical practitioner, was the son of Alexander Yule and his wife Jessie Lumsden Pratt. He was educated at Watson's College and the University of Edinburgh, qualified as Bachelor of Medicine (MB) and Master in Surgery (CM) in 1894, and then completed a Bachelor of Science (BSc) degree in Public Health (1896). During the next few years he held various appointments as pathologist at fever hospitals in the United Kingdom. He graduated as Doctor of Medicine (MD) at the University of Edinburgh in 1899 with a thesis on typhoid perforations and published "Perforation in enteric fever, with notes of ten cases" in the Edinburgh Medical Journal (1899). He became a member of the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh in 1900, and was elected a Fellow in 1904.
In 1900 Yule volunteered for service in the Anglo-Boer War (1900-1902) and was appointed second in command of the Edinburgh and East of Scotland Hospital at Norvalspont, on the Orange River. Later that year he transferred to Bloemfontein and entered the civil service of the Orange River Colony, created shortly after the British occupation of the former Orange Free State during the Anglo-Boer War. In June 1901 he was appointed medical officer of health and registrar of births and deaths of the Orange River Colony. He was licensed to practice medicine in the colony in October 1902. Shortly after his appointment he wrote medical reports on the fulfillment of the recommendations of the refugee camp commission (September 1901) and on the Kroonstad and Brandford refugee camps (November 1901), as well as Refugee camps - mortality statistics (Bloemfontein, 1902, 44p). He became a member of the Philosophical Society of the Orange River Colony in 1903, the year it was established in Bloemfontein, and served on its committee for 1906/7. Around that time he presented a paper before the society on "Patent and proprietary medicines". In 1908 he delivered a paper on "Water supply" at the South African Medical Congress.
Yule was appointed an extraordinary member of the Legislative Council of the Orange River Colony in 1907. Following the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910 he was retrenched in 1911 and that same year resigned from the Medical and Pharmacy Council of the Orange Free State. He returned to Scotland in 1912 and became medical officer of health of the County of Fife, a post he held until his retirement in 1938. He was, however, still registered as a medical practitioner in the Orange Free State in 1916, though at this time he resided at Cupar, Fife, Scotland, where he later died. He was survived by his wife, a son and two daughters. One of his daughters, then Mrs Lawrence, became Professor of Psychology at the University of Natal.
