When he had completed only one year of his clinical studies, he joined the Navy as a Surgeon Probationer, as it was possible to do in the first world war, and saw service in a sloop, HMS Wistaria, in the Mediterranean. He returned for study leave at intervals to complete his clinical work and to qualify.[3]
After qualifying MRCS, LRCP and graduating MB BS (Lond.) in 1918, he volunteered, after the end of WWI, as a Surgeon Lieutenant for mine-sweeping in the Baltic.[3] He abandoned his ambition to become a medical missionary. He held appointments at King's College Hospital and from 1919 to 1920 was Sambroke Surgical Registrar and Tutor there. In 1920 he graduated MD and qualified MRCP. In 1921 he was appointed to the staff of the Royal Hospital, Wolverhampton. In 1929 he was elected FRCP.[3]
His early work was mainly on mineral elements. His Hunterian Lecture to the College of Surgeons in 1928 was entitled "An undescribed disease of bone", but he had already been writing on haemochromatosis and he began studying this disease in depth, gave the Bradshaw Lecture on the subject at the RCP in 1934, and published the results as a book in 1935.[3]
He gained an outstanding medical reputation throughout the Midlands and into mid-Wales. In Wolverhampton, he arranged his out-patient clinic to coincide with market day, for the convenience of his patients. He was consultant physician to several hospitals.[4]
He visited the old people of Wolverhampton in their homes, and his Social Medicine of Old Age is still an important publication. His report to the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board on its geriatric services helped the region to lead the country in the geriatric field.[4]
Sheldon's Wolverhampton community survey of elderly people, the first of its kind after the war, was carried out at the behest of the Nuffield Foundation, chaired by Seebohm Rowntree. The ration card register was used to locate the random 1-in-30 sample of 583 old people (186 men over 65 and 397 women over 60 years). The survey was carried out between January and April 1945.[5]
Sheldon's 1961 Report to the Birmingham Regional Hospital Board on its Geriatric Service found inadequate hospital services for infirm geriatric patients. He made several recommendations including replacement of some older hospital buildings, appointment of more geriatric physicians, more postgraduate medical education in modern geriatrics, and adequate staffing of all sections of rehabilitation teams for geriatric patients.[5]
In 1949 under the auspices of the Royal College of Physicians, he gave the F. E. Williams Lecture on the role of the aged in modern society. In 1954 he was elected president of the International Association of Gerontology,[4] and in 1955 he went on an international lecture tour devoted to gerontology. In 1955 he was appointed CBE. In 1956 he was made a Fellow of King's College London.[3]
A keen ornithologist and photographer, he combined the two hobbies for a time to study the flight of birds, how they dived and the stability of some of them when asleep standing on one leg. He published in British Birds his observations over a number of years on the movements of the Northern golden plover while on migration through South Staffordshire.[3]
In his earlier years he did a good deal of mountaineering years and in 1928 was honoured by the French Government for a courageous Alpine rescue on the Aiguille of the Petit Dru. He was a member of the Alpine Club and president of the Midland Association of Mountaineers.[4]
J. Harold Sheldon had two brothers and two sisters. His brother Wilfrid became Sir Wilfrid Sheldon KCVO, FRCP,[6] and his brother Geoffrey Colin Sheldon (1906–1997) became a general practitioner in Reigate.
In 1921 in Newport, Monmouthshire, J. Harold Sheldon married Marjorie Bannister. Their first child, Peggy, was born in 1924. Their second child died at birth. In 1927 they took a trip to the Alps, and Marjorie died, probably from a large pulmonary embolus, while they were mountaineering.
In 1961 on the Isle of Wight, he married Miss Luckett, with whom he had worked for many years. The couple moved to a small cottage in Codsall Wood.
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