Gangrene in a 77-year old woman with arteriosclerotic, obliterative vascular and heart disease: detail of right foot showing swelling, discolouration and decomposition of the skin around nails and at heal. Watercolour by Barbara E. Nicholson, 1950.

Ashford, Middlesex, 1950.

1 painting : watercolour, with gouache ; sheet 18.7 x 16.3 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 77, 7.4.50 Lettering inscribed in pencil, accompanying typed note with patient history describes loss of movement, sensation and pulsation in foot. Condition progressed to the extent that all toes became gangreneous and mid-thigh amputation was performed Bears number: 193/1950

Wellcome Collection 33544i

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.

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.