Benign stomach tumour in an eighteen year old girl with anaemia: view and sections showing fibroma adherent to stomach, mesocolon and pancreas. Watercolour by Barbara E. Nicholson, 1952.

Ashford, Middlesex, 1952.

1 painting : watercolour, with gouache ; sheet 22 x 26.7 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.

Typed accompanying note with patient history describes a mass, the size of a large grapefruit, lying behind the umbilicus, which did not appear in radiographical investigations. A laparotomy was performed and large tumour found, the bulk of which lay in the lesser sac, protruding into the mesocolon. This was removed with a portion of the stomach and the transverse colon. It is also noted that the patient recovered and following marriage produced an infant a year later Bears number: 303/1952

Closed until 01/01/2035

Wellcome Collection 34537i

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.