Thank you Liver Lady

When I was studying for my PGCE, a lecturer asked us to draw a picture of a scientist.  Despite the majority of us being female, most of the drawings showed a man in a white coat with mad hair.  No surprise there; science is a male dominated world where men get all the fame and glory.  To help change our views, we were tasked to research and present a female scientist.  Naturally there were plenty of Powerpoints on Marie Curie, Virginia Apgar and Katherine Johnson, but if I could have that opportunity again, I would present to you Sheila Sherlock, the Liver Lady.

Sheila Patricia Violet Sherlock, born March 31 1918 in Dublin, but raised in Folkstone, Kent, was one of those pioneering women who broke the all-male moulds through her brilliance and determination.

In pre-war Britain, female applicants to medical schools were at a great disadvantage, and she was rejected by several colleges before gaining a place at Edinburgh University in 1936. Her outstanding abilities however meant that when she graduated in 1941, she finished top of her year. Bravo!

After Edinburgh, she moved to London and joined the department of medicine at the Royal postgraduate school and Hammersmith hospital as a medical researcher, where she later became both a lecturer and consultant. At Hammersmith, she studied the biochemistry and pathophysiology of liver disease.  The liver became her particular area of interest, for allegedly the reason that no one else was doing it.  For back in the 1940s when she started out, the speciality of hepatology did not exist; Sherlock was its main creator, and, in a glittering 60-year career, became one of the world's most famous names in clinical science.

As the first professor of medicine at London's Royal Free hospital school of medicine, she maintained its tradition of powerful and charismatic female pioneers. Under her leadership, the department became a focal point for trainees in hepatology from virtually every country, and many of today's leaders in the field spent part, or all, of their training under her. Her influence extended to colleagues in surgery, radiology and pathology, and many of them became liver specialists in their own fields.

Within this glittering career Sheila Sherlock also found time to raise two children, become president of the British Society of Gastroenterology, editor of Gut (great name!) and the Journal of Hepatology, and also was a founder - and later president - of the British Liver Trust, a national charity supporting liver research and patients with liver disease.

Her contribution to the understanding and medical study of liver diseases are well documented through her writing and her papers covered every aspect of liver disease, with more than 600 articles published in scientific journals. Her legacy lasts through her book ‘Diseases Of The Liver And Biliary System’ (1955), which became popular because of its clarity and authority and is still in print.

Dame Sheila Patricia Violet Sherlock died December 30 2001 but I will remember her the day later.  On New Year’s Eve I will raise my glass of Nosecco and thank her that I am still alive and reasonably well, thanks to her establishment of hepatology medicine.

Thanks to The Guardian's Obiturary to this fine lady for information contained in this eulogy.