Atheroma in a 68-year old man with perforated stomach ulcer and fatal uraemia: section showing gross deterioration of arteries with dissecting aneurysm. Watercolour by Barbara E. Nicholson, 1950.

Ashford, Middlesex, 1950.

1 painting : watercolour, with gouache ; sheet 17.1 x 10 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.

abdominal aorta, l<eft> renal artery, r<ight> renal a<rtery> Lettering inscribed in pencil as key, typed accompanying note with detailed patient history states laparotomy revealed many old lesions from an old operation. The aneurism grew from a slit in a patch of ulceration, it had constricted the right venal artery and completely occluded surrounding passages, where a thick layer of blood had split the media Bears number: 187/1950

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 33548i

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.