A girl (Akae) with a tumour over her right eye. Gouache, 18--, after Lam Qua, ca. 183-.

She is standing against a white background. The corresponding painting at Yale has a landscape background

Case summary from Peter Parker's journal: "I observed a Chinese [man] advance timidly to the hospital leading his little daughter, who at first sight appeared to have two heads. A sarcoma hung over the right eye and so depressed the lid as to exclude the light. The child complained of vertigo, and habitually inclined her head to the left side. It was evident that left to itself the tumor might terminate the life of the child." As a precaution, Dr. Parker had both parents sign a statement which read "they would exculpate me from censure, if the child should die in consequence of the attempt. An opiate was given 15 minutes before, and wine and water during the operation. the patient cheerfully submitted to be blindfolded and to have her hands and feet confined. The tumor was extirpated in 8 minutes." (quoted from the Medical Historical Library, Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, Yale University, website, loc. cit.)

[183?-?]

1 painting : gouache ; sight 47.5 x 24.3 cm

Verso not seen (concealed by frame)

Stephen D. Rachman, The mysteries of Lam Qua: medical portraiture in China 1836-1855, website, http://www.historicalvoices.org/lamqua/index.php (accessed 30 July 2004), this case not included

Peter Parker Collection, Medical Historical Library, Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, Yale University, website http://www.med.yale.edu/library/historical/parker (accessed 16 October 2009), no. 1

Sander L. Gilman, 'Lam Qua and the development of a westernized medical iconography in China', Medical history, 1986, 30: 57-69

Larissa N. Heinrich, The afterlife of images: translating the pathological body between China and the West, Durham: Duke University Press, 2008

Wellcome Collection 679510i

After: one of at least 115 paintings executed in Canton (Guangzhou) by Lam Qua, ca. 1830-1850, for the American missionary Peter Parker (1804-1888), and which are now (2004) in the Peter Parker Collection, Medical Historical Library, Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, Yale University, New Haven; the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art (Cornell University); and the Gordon Museum, Guy's Hospital, London: see cited works by Gilman, Rachman and Heinrich. A painting in the Yale library (Peter Parker Collection, op. cit.) shows the same subject