Dame Sheila Patricia Violet Sherlock (31 March 1918 – 30 December 2001) was a British physician and medical educator who is considered the major 20th-century contributor to the field of hepatology (the study of the liver).

In the same year she was appointed House Physician to Professor Sir John McMichael at the Royal Postgraduate Medical School, Hammersmith Hospital.

[1] In this post she worked on hepatitis, which she was able to continue from 1943 to 1947 with funding from the Medical Research Council and subsequently with the award of the Beit Memorial Fellowship.

In 1947 she spent a year at Yale University's School of Medicine as a Rockefeller Travelling Fellow, working on carbohydrate metabolism and liver disease.

In 1951, aged 33, she was elected as a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, making her, at the time, the youngest woman to receive this qualification.

She founded the liver unit which was located in a temporary wooden structure on the roof of the hospital in Gray's Inn Road.

Research continued there, with viral hepatitis, liver transplantation and endoscopic treatment of varices all becoming important areas of study.

[1] Although occasionally referred to as Mrs Sheila James she generally preferred to be known by her maiden name, and was one of the first female professionals to follow this pattern.

She pioneered the use of needle liver biopsy,[14] which had been used purely as a research tool, based on the technique of Sir John McMichael.

In 1966, she developed, with Deborah Doniach of the Middlesex Hospital, the standard test for Primary Biliary Cirrhosis[15] and later showed that it was an autoimmune disease.

If the patient is uncontrollable half the usual dose of pentobarbital may be given: morphia is absolutely contraindicated, Drugs known to induce hepatic coma such as ammonium sals, ammonium-exchange resins, methionine, urea and diamond are disallowed'[20] in the British Medical Bulletin in 1957 but then went on to conduct an experiment in which those with liver disease morphine.