Toes of left and right foot showing gangrenous developments, infection and inflammation around nails in a 68-year old man with occlusion, ischaemia and thromboangiitis obliterans in arteries and blood vessels. Watercolour by Barbara E. Nicholson, 1948.

Ashford, Middlesex, 1948.

1 painting : watercolour, with gouache ; sheet 14 x 7.5 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.

Right foot, left foot, <...> 29.9.48 Lettering inscribed as key in pencil, accompanying typed note with detailed patient history refers to claudication, perionychiae and epithelioma at this period. Amputation in right leg in following year and patient described as "still about" in 1952 Bears number: 121/1948

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 32674i

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.