A woman (Kwo Pe) with a tumour hanging from her upper lip. Gouache, 18--, after Lam Qua, ca. 1839.

From Dr. Parker's report, dated 14 December 1839: "Kwo Pe, age 27, of Shintih. Seven years since, this amiable young woman found a tumor commencing on the right side of the upper lip. It had now attained the size of her fist, and hung pendulous, reaching below the chin. December 19, the tumor was removed by the harelip operation. In a few days more she was discharged perfectly well." (Peter Parker's report, Peter Parker Collection website, loc. cit.).

She is seated on a bamboo stool

[1839?]

1 painting : gouache ; sheet 53 x 33 cm

Bears number on verso: No. 26

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), does not include this work

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 20 December 2004), no. 2

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 643382i

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 shows the same subject (Peter Parker Collection, op. cit.)