Tumour of sphenoid in 44-year old woman with brain cancer and diplopia: section, seen from above. Watercolour by Barbara E. Nicholson, 1949.

Ashford, Middlesex, 1949.

1 painting : watercolour, with gouache and black ink ; sheet 27 x 21 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.

P<ost>-m<ortem> specimen, 27.9.29, oblique coronal section through sphenoid <just posterior to pituitary fossa> passing through soft palate inferiorly, from above, from below, r<ight>, l<eft> Lettering inscribed in black ink on mount, typed accompanying note with patient history describes cancer as large nasopharyngeal squamous celled carcinoma invading the base of the skull in the region of the basi-sphenoid and producing cranial nerve palsies Bears number: 152/1949

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 33206i

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.