Renal cancer in a 46-year old man with fatal bronchopneumonia: kidney lymph node, microscopic view. Watercolour by Barbara E. Nicholson, 1951.

Ashford, Middlesex, 1951.

1 painting : watercolour, with gouache ; sheet 13.7 x 11.9 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.

Published case notes, found in British journal of urology, vol. 23, no.3, 1951, pages 263-266, define cancer as diffuse pulmonary lymphatic carcinomatosis due to a renal carcinoma showing cytoplasmic inclusions. The case report gives detailed patient history and includes post-mortem internal findings which state that lungs were heavy and almost solid due to rounded white nodules. This tumour infiltration was conspicuous around the bronchi and formed a continuous chain down to the abdomen. The left kidney showed a large unattached tumour, with evidence of necrosis and haemorrhages. Right kidney was covered in a tumour growing in tubile masses, described as granular, eosinophilic and with variable, bizarre and giant cellular structure. All lymph nodes were completely replaced by this same tumour infiltration and played a major role in dissemination Bears number: 216/1951

Wellcome Collection 34026i

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.