James Sherren

James Sherren (1872 to 1945) was a British surgeon whose name is attached to two terms about appendicitis. Born in Weymouth, Dorset, the son of a printer and publisher, he attended Weymouth College, went to sea and became a Master Mariner before studying at the London Hospital Medical College, where he later worked as a surgeon. In 1901 he agreed to divide two nerves in the arm of his colleague Henry Head so that they could study how Head recovered; the two published three books together, one with W. H. R. Rivers. Sherren served with the War Office in the First World War, rose to colonel and was appointed CBE in 1919. Sherren's triangle, the area between the anterior superior iliac spine, the pubic symphysis and the navel, is a place where increased skin sensitivity may signal appendicitis, and the Ochsner-Sherren treatment is the conservative, non-surgical management of the disease. In the mid 1920s he left hospital practice to become a ship's surgeon and died in Dorset in 1945.