Subaortic stenosis in a fourteen year old boy with fatal bacterial endocarditis and heart congestion: section of heart showing devastated aortic valves, covered in vegetation. Watercolour by Barbara E. Nicholson, 1955.

Ashford, Middlesex, 1955.

1 painting : watercolour, with gouache ; sheet 18.1 x 14.2 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.

Typed accompanying note with patient history states that treatment included penicillin and aureomycin. Complications also included diastolic murmur and possible bicuspid valves Bears number: 440/1955

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 35416i

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.