Chest of 68-year old man with terminal lung cancer, with extension to lymph glands, producing superior vena cava obstruction: life study sketch showing discolouration in veins. Watercolour by Barbara E. Nicholson, 1949.

Ashford, Middlesex, 1949.

1 painting : watercolour, with gouache with pencil ; sheet 14.5 x 16.4 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.

<...> aged 16.6.49 Lettering inscribed in pencil, accompanying typed note with patient history describes symptoms including choking, giddiness, swelling and cyanosis with treatment of deep x-ray therapy. This resulted in secondary tumours in lungs and complete obstruction of other main arteries Bears number: 157/1949

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 33208i

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.