In 1939 in East Glamorgan, Glamorganshire, he married Joan Rees, daughter of a
Cardiganshire physician. Spillane then enlisted in the
RAMC and was posted to the
military hospital at Aldershot.[2] He was subsequently posted to the Middle East as an adviser in neurology to the
Ninth Army. He completed his war service as lieutenant colonel and adviser in neurology to
Middle East Forces. After the end of WWII he spent a year at the
National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery,
Queen Square, London. He was appointed in 1946 an assistant physician to the
Cardiff Royal Infirmary and then a consultant neurologist there, as well as an honorary lecturer at the Welsh National School of Medicine. His clinical research, teaching, and writing helped to establish an international reputation for the Cardiff Royal Infirmary's department of neurology. He gave weekly clinical demonstrations known as the "JD Show".[1]
Spillane was elected FRCP in 1950. In the 1960s he was one of the first to use
carbamazepine for the treatment of
trigeminal neuralgia.[2] In 1968 he published An Atlas of Clinical Neurology,[4] with in 1975 a second edition and in 1982 a third edition, which was revised by his son, John, who was also a consultant neurologist.[1] The Atlas was translated into four languages.[2] In 1972 J. D. Spillane delivered the
Bradshaw Lecture on The geography of neurology.[5] In 1974 he retired and was elected president of the
Association of British Neurologists.[1] Under the auspices of the
Royal Society of Medicine he gave in 1976 the Hughlings Jackson lecture on Hughlings Jackson's American contemporaries: the birth of American neurology.[6] For the academic year 1976–1977 he was Sandoz visiting professor at the
Dartmouth Medical School in New Hampshire.[1]
Upon his death he was survived by his widow, his son, and two daughters.[2]
Doctrine of the nerves: chapters in the history of neurology. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. 1981.[8]
Medical travellers : narratives from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press. 1984.[9]
as editor: Tropical neurology. London; New York: Oxford University Press. 1973. (This was the first textbook specifically dealing with the subspecialty of tropical neurology within
tropical medicine.)[10]
^Keystone, J. S. (3 October 1996). "Review of Tropical Neurology edited by Raad A. Shakir, Peter K. Newman, and Charles M. Poser". N Engl J Med. 335 (14): 1075–1076.
doi:
10.1056/NEJM199610033351421.