Artist kept hospital in picture
Medical illustration was essential for hospital records and teaching before the widespread use of cameras.
Central Middlesex Hospital commissioned its first work in 1930 paying the country’s first recognised medical artist Thornton Shiells the princely sum of five guineas to draw a diseased kidney.
The scarcity of photographic materials during World War Two saw the hospital become the first in the UK to appoint a full-time medical artist.
Dorothy Barber was released from the Women’s Land Army in 1942 and found a temporary home in the plaster room before a studio space was created above the hospital’s workhouse store.
Barber, who was one of the founding members of the Medical Artists Association of Great Britain, would often make pencil sketches in theatre before working up finished pieces in her studio with coloured pens or water colours.
Her services were so in demand that an assistant was appointed. It was testament to Dorothy’s tutelage that five of her subsequent assistants went on to become resident medical artists at large hospitals.
The image above was painted in 1953 showing typical crowded unhygienic living conditions that aggravated respiratory illnesses common in the area.
Picture credit: Public Domain Mark.