Sheldon, John (1752–1808), anatomist and surgeon, was born at his father's house in Tottenham Court Road, London, on 6 July 1752, the eldest son of John Sheldon, surgeon apothecary, formerly in the Royal Navy. He had a younger brother, Thomas, and two sisters, Mary Elizabeth and Anna Maria. Educated at Harrow School, where he was flogged for ‘making a boat and floating it’, he was then apprenticed to Henry Watson, professor of anatomy at the Company of Surgeons, whose school at Rathbone Place, London, was later wrecked by a mob. Sheldon trained also at the Westminster and the Lock hospitals. On William Hewson's death in 1774 he succeeded him as resident pupil to John Hunter, attending William Hunter's school of anatomy in Great Windmill Street. Sheldon's interest in embalming profited from the knowledge gained from both teachers. After receiving his diploma in 1775 from the Company of Surgeons he was appointed to the Lock Hospital, where he had been a pupil, continuing lecturing and research. There he was able to use his embalming skills in a case for which he became notorious. Sheldon had as a patient a young woman, dying of phthisis, to whom, he said, he became deeply attached. Acceding to her request for her body to be preserved after death and kept beside him, he removed it, embalmed and injected, to his own house, where it was displayed in a glass-topped cabinet. Later it was described with enthusiasm by Faujas-de-St-Fond. Twenty years later Sheldon's widow presented the mummy to the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons. Appointed lecturer in anatomy at William Hunter's school in 1776, Sheldon's success prompted him to open his own school in Great Queen Street, London, in 1777. Though still only twenty-five years of age, with William Hewson and Magnus Falconar now deceased he was the only outstanding teacher of his generation. He was appointed surgeon to the General Medical Asylum in Welbeck Street, and on 18 July 1783 succeeded William Hunter as professor of anatomy at the Royal Academy, earning, it is said, great respect. It is related how, having dissected a horse, he had casts made of it for the use of the students.

In 1779 Sheldon founded the Great Queen Street Medical Society, becoming its first president. At one time it had 150 members and issued diplomas. One rule required the president to ‘wear his hat while in the chair’. On 29 April 1784 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, and on 20 April 1786 a member of the Royal Society of Medicine of Paris.

In 1781 Sheldon edited a catalogue of Petrus Camper's works, Historiae literariae cultoribus; the following year he edited four dissertations by J. N. Lieberkuehn, published in London. Sheldon's chief work, The History of the Absorbent System, Part the First, was published in 1784. In it he paid generous tribute to William Hewson, and to John Hunter, who had ingested madder to prove the pigment was absorbed and carried by the lymphatics. He described meticulously his own methods of injection and preservation, his cannula tip bevelled, as in a modern instrument, to facilitate penetration of the vessels. Antonio Scarpa, professor of anatomy at Pavia, was so impressed by his work that he prepared two illustrations for the book. Sheldon was widely praised because he made no secret of his methods. It was in fact a most learned treatise that corrected many errors of earlier writers on the subject.

Sheldon now became much involved with early efforts at ballooning, making calculations about the gravity of the atmosphere and investigating materials for construction. An attempt at making a balloon failed in 1784, but on 16 October that year Sheldon made his first ascent with J. P. Blanchard, who had already had several successes. Although the balloon travelled as far as Sunbury, where Sheldon alighted, a violent altercation had developed between them, and Blanchard proceeded alone to Romsey. About 1784 Sheldon married Rebecca (d. 1820), second daughter of the Revd William Palmer, vicar of Combe Raleigh in Devon; they had no children.

Sheldon was elected surgeon to Westminster Hospital on 20 April 1786. At the time he had become interested in studying the anatomy of whales. He devised a poisoned harpoon for this purpose, and in 1788 set out for Greenland. On the voyage he is said to have had an attack of brain fever and had to be transferred to a returning ship. He moved from London to Exeter in the same year, from then on subject to recurrent illness, probably a manic-depressive psychosis. His brother petitioned the queen for him to be allowed to continue the annual lectures at the Royal Academy, which he gave until his death. Sheldon's brother and sisters assisted in his nursing. His Essay on the Fracture of the Patella, already written, was published in 1789. During recovery, in 1796, he contributed ‘An essay on the iris’ to the volume Essays, by a Society of Gentlemen at Exeter.

In 1797 Sheldon was appointed a surgeon to the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital. Highly regarded by his colleagues, it was recognized that his intellect became ‘clouded at intervals’ (Harris, 84, and also mentioned by Farington Diary, ed. Greig, 6.182). He died on 8 October 1808 at his cottage in Exeter by the Exe, and was buried in Combe Raleigh churchyard. An obituary notice in the Monthly Mirror spoke of him as ‘humane, active in every intercourse of friendship and, though of so animated a character, mild, forbearing and affable … There was nothing like envy in his composition’ (Dobson, 83).

Alick Cameron