After education at Carlisle Grammar School, Harold Sheehan studied medicine at the University of Manchester, graduating MB ChB in 1921.
[3] There the professor of pathology was John Shaw Dunn,[5] who supervised Sheehan's MD thesis (1931) on the deposition of dyes in the mammalian kidney.
[3] He analysed the effects of obstetrical shock, he differentiated between the fatty liver of delayed chloroform poisoning and the condition of primary fatty liver of pregnancy, he demonstrated the reactivation of latent rheumatic heart disease that was induced by pregnancy, he clarified the effects of eclampsia upon the liver and kidneys, he identified the encephalopathy of hyperemesis gravidarum as Wernicke's disease, he recognized the association between concealed accidental haemorrhage and renal cortical necrosis and recognized that obstetrical shock and haemorrhage could induce necrosis of the anterior lobe of the pituitary gland.
[3] ... he helped to show that the sporadic jaundice seen in soldiers treated with intravenous arsenicals was caused by dirty syringes and needles infected with what we now know as hepatitis B virus.
[3] The paper showed convincingly that emaciation and premature senility, previously considered to be essential for the diagnosis of pituitary insufficiency, were not features of the syndrome.
From 1965 to 1980 in a room set aside for him at the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine he studied his case notes and thousands of histopathological specimens accumulated over many years.