Fatal adrenal pheochromocytoma in a 48-year woman with hypertension and pontile haemorrhage: (a) section of left kidney, displaced by chromaffin tumour with gross exudates and (b) tracing after intravenous pyelogram showing pelvic pattern. Watercolour by Barbara E. Nicholson, 1954.

Ashford, Middlesex, 1954.

1 painting : watercolour, with gouache and black ink ; sheet 21.2 x 34.6 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.

Tracing from I. V. P. 69956 Lettering inscribed in black ink, typed accompanying note with patient history gives detailed test and investigation results. Treatment included benzodioxane, hexamethorium and apresoline Bears number: 433/1954

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 35313i

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.