He is credited with being the first to introduce the microscope to the school and his many scientific papers which appeared in such publications as The North British Agriculturalist were and remain to this day the basis of much modern research.

He went first to the Quaker school Ackworth in South Yorkshire for four years, before for a while helping on the farm, where he became fascinated by the illnesses the animals were prone to.

His contemporary James Simpson, the pioneer of chloroform, described him as "a man destined to advance and elevate veterinary science"; Professor William Gairdner, Glasgow's first Medical Officer, called him "a great original thinker, so truthful and so unselfish".

John Henry grew up and made his early life there until he moved to Birmingham in 1900 to join George Cadbury at Bournville.

[5] All his life, John Barlow followed the doctrines of the Society of Friends (Quakers) whose Christian beliefs shaped his gentle, modest, unassuming character.

Of their three children, John Henry Barlow, went on to be one of the Society's most prominent elder statesmen in World War I, leading the pacifist cause and securing the right to abstain on grounds of conscience and helping to start The Friends Ambulance Unit.