Gangrenous changes in the knees of a twenty three year old woman with nephrotic syndrome and mitral disease. Watercolour by Barbara E. Nicholson, 1949.

Ashford, Middlesex, 1949.

1 painting : watercolour, with gouache ; sheet 18.9 x 11.4 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.

Typed accompanying note with patient history gives a detailed record of endocarditis of the mitral valve, and cerebral embolism with axillary thrombosis. Following admission, terminal congestive heart failure and chronic nephritis developed, and mitral disease was confirmed at post-mortem. Observations at autopsy included a thrombus at upper end of superor vena cava and in right auricle, typical of the condition bacterial endocarditis Bears number: 174/1949

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 33478i

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.