Fatal cancer tumour in right side of neck, in twelve year old girl. Pencil sketch by Barbara E. Nicholson, 1949.

Ashford, Middlesex, 1949.

1 drawing : pencil ; sheet 13.7 x 11.8 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.

<...> aged 13 Lettering inscribed in pencil, accompanying typed note with patient history relates that neck was swollen for seven months, became hard and painful however radiograph results remained negative. Biopsy report identified cancer as a malignant spindle cell tumour, sarcomatous in appearance but probably an anaplastic carcinoma Bears number: 160/1949

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 33251i

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.