Post-mortem sketch of upper body showing venous gangrene in right arm of 74-year old woman with congestive heart failure and thrombosis causing several chronic occlusions. Watercolour by Barbara E. Nicholson, 1948.

Ashford, Middlesex, 1948.

1 painting : watercolour, with gouache and pencil ; sheet 24.5 x 18.3 cm

Barbara Evelyn Nicholson (1906 – 1978) trained at the Royal College of Art, graduating in 1923. She began her artistic career as a medical illustrator and was a founder member of the Medical Artists Association, where she is recorded as serving on an exhibition committee in October 1949. By 1951, she had illustrated G.F. Gibberd, A short textbook of midwifery (2nd ed., London: J. & A. Churchill, 1941) and Philip Wiles, Essentials of orthopaedics (London: J. & A. Churchill, 1949). The Medical Artists Association records last list her, in 1951. In the 1950s her focus moved to botanical subjects and from the late 1950s – 1970s she was a prolific botanical illustrator.

P<ost>-m<ortem> sketch of <...>, 29.9.48 Lettering inscribed in pencil, accompanying typed note with patient history and post-mortem findings contains obervations on thrombosis of left coronary artery in connection with fibrosis in the left ventricle wall and right internal jugular and axillary veins total occlusion. Thrombosis was also noted in the mesenteric veins and base of brain Bears number: 120/1948

The watercolours and pen and ink drawings held by Wellcome Collection were painted by Barbara Nicholson at Ashford Hospital, Ashford, Middlesex, between 1946 and 1951, at the request of the surgeon Norman Matheson.

Wellcome Collection 32678i

Presented to the Wellcome Institute Library in 1987 by Ashford Postgraduate Medical Centre, as part of a collection of medical illustrations by Barbara E. Nicholson.