Dr Shirley and John Sarks

Shirley’s specialist training was undertaken at the Royal Free Hospital in London,  John trained at Sydney Eye Hospital and they met when John travelled to work in the UK.

After Shirley obtained her Fellowships John brought her to Sydney where she was appointed to St Vincent’s Hospital and also to Lidcombe Hospital, the main institution for aged and homeless men who had no relatives.   The attraction was that it offered a lot of surgery but it was also a good opportunity to study AMD, an unfashionable disease at the time.  The long-stay resident patients allowed for following the progression of the disease at regular intervals for up to 20 years.   

 Shirley established what became the Lidcombe branch of the Sydney Eye Bank and patients gave their permission to use their eyes for corneal grafting and research.  Until technicians were allowed to do so, Shirley collected the eyes at all hours.  Eyes that were returned after grafting or, if they had not been used, were dissected into blocks, before finding a laboratory prepared to do the pathology. Then the stained sections were taken to a photographic department where she met Prof Tait-Smith who was so impressed by what she was doing in her own time that he offered her pathology facilities at Prince Henry Hospital.  As luck would have it, he routinely used the picro-Mallory stain which demonstrated the formation of an abnormal basement material that could be correlated with the degree of degeneration.

The project commenced in 1967 and Shirley’s appointment lasted until the hospital closed in 1995. Over this 28-year period a total of 616 eyes from 364 patients were obtained, or approximately from one patient per month.   This project provided not only the opportunity to document the long term progress of the disease with serial photography, but ultimately also to provide a unique correlation with the pathology. 

John and Shirley collaborated on the research and publications from the outset.   In 1984 John lost an arm but he and Shirley continued in private practice specialising in medical retina until they retired.

Outside of work they have been keen hikers, walking in various national parks in different countries.  Highlights were stumbling on a grizzly bear and 2 cubs in Yellowstone National Park and crossing the Copeland Pass in NZ.  Shirley also regularly won the local garden competition.