Section of the skull, at post-mortem, showing the impact of secondary cancerous tumour swelling in the head of a 49-year old man, with fatal primary bronchial carcinoma. Watercolour by Barbara E. Nicholson, 1947.

Ashford, Middlesex, 1947.

1 painting : watercolour, with gouache ; sheet 13.7 x 10.6 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.

15.10.47, p<ost> m<ortem> specimen,452/47 Lettering inscribed in pencil, accompanying typed note explains patient history with post-mortem details of carcinomatous lymph glands with thrombus and spreading tumour, ten centimetres wide, traveling through the arteries into the bronchus. The tumour in the head projected into the cranial cavity and flattened the brain beneath this area Bears number: 79/1947

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 32238i

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.