MedSpeak Illuminated

I. Luks Francois

Sujets

• Médecine
• History of medicine

Informations

• Publié par: The Kent State University Press
• Date de parution: 21 juin 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781631014895
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 3 Mo

Extrait

MedSpeak Illuminated
 
MedSpeak Illuminated
The Art and Practice of Medical Illustration
François I. Luks
The Kent State University Press Kent, Ohio
To Monique, Valérie, Charlotte, and Sophie: the best, smartest, most supportive, most— well, you get the picture …
Frontispiece: Biliary function and technique of cholecystectomy (Posterior view of stomach and duodenum). After Henry Vandyke Carter (1918), Gray’s Anatomy
© 2022 by The Kent State University Press, Kent, Ohio 44242 All rights reserved
Unless otherwise noted, all illustrations are by the author.
ISBN 978-1-60635-443-8 Manufactured in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced, in any manner whatsoever, without written permission from the Publisher, except in the case of short quotations in critical reviews or articles.
Cataloging information for this title is available at the Library of Congress.
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Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1  The History of Medical Illustration
2  The Accidental Medical Illustrator
3  The Shady Side of Medical Illustration
4  The Bright Side of Medical Illustration
5  A Universal Language
6  Grammar and Syntax of Medical Illustration
7  The Physician as Visual Communicator
8  The Physician as Illustrator
Notes
Index
Preface
Ten years ago, I agreed to give a two-hour workshop on medical illustration to first-year medical students. Fortunately, I was not asked to show my credentials in the field of scientific illustration (I have none), but I felt at least somewhat qualified. I have been drawing (and doodling) for most of my childhood and all of my adult life and have accumulated a decent portfolio of medical illustrations—illustrations of my own research work and that of friends and colleagues. I am also a huge medical illustration nerd and have met many extremely talented and experienced medical illustrators along the way, giving me a little bit of street cred by association.
The two-hour workshop struck a nerve, and gradually morphed into a full semester course for undergraduate students at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. To try to make the course interesting (for the students and myself), I interspersed drawing instruction classes with lectures on the history of medical illustration, the parallels between the two professions (doctors and illustrators), the ethical aspects of anatomic dissection and scientific illustration—and I went deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole of medicine in art: the innumerable references to medical conditions and medical practices in classic paintings and sculptures. Most of it had been described plenty of times before, but I stumbled onto a few pearls and undiscovered treasures that I couldn’t wait to share with the students. And as I am only an enlightened amateur when it comes to medical illustration, I complemented my own shortcomings with guest appearances by professional illustrators who could fill in the gaps.
The positive reactions of students and colleagues to a course in medical illustration have told me that I am not alone in my fascination with the subject, and many doctor-artists have come out of the proverbial woodwork after finding out about the classes. Many more physicians and academics draw in their daily life (to explain or teach) without calling themselves even budding artists. Clearly, we are all visual communicators, and most of us wouldn’t mind getting better at it.
This book is inspired by the course. It is not a syllabus, however, even though parts of it may seem familiar to former students. It is not an authoritative history of medical illustration; it is not a drawing manual; and it is definitely not a scholarly work on art history or the history of medicine. It could be considered fan fiction of any (or all) of the above from the point of view of a weathered academic surgeon with more than a passing interest in medical illustration. I hope that this book will help others appreciate the role of scientific visualization, its place in history, its relevance today, and the lessons it can teach all of us if we want to be better communicators.
Acknowledgments
This project is the result of a virtual meeting brokered by Jay Baruch (skilled emergency medicine physician and brilliant writer), who put me in contact with Susan Wadsworth-Booth, Kent State University Press director and fairy godmother of this book. She was nice enough to listen to me and believed my ideas had potential. Without Jay or Susan, this book would not exist. I am grateful for the friendship and advice of a growing posse of medical illustrators—chief among them Ian Suk, the most gifted artist and nicest person I know; Jill Gregory in New York, Julia Lerner and Vinnie Francis at Brown, Brian Dunham in Philadelphia, and various members of the Association of Medical Illustrators who have been so generous and welcoming. Between the course in medical illustration and our new Medical Comics workshop at Brown, I have relied on many other professionals—Emily Slapin, Deirdre Fearon, Scott Collins, Valerie Weiss, Marguerite Vigliani, Shirlene Obuobi—and they are all present in the book, as is Susan Doyle, chair of the Illustration Department at RISD, and an even greater cheerleader than I am for the possibilities of RISD-Brown partnerships in medical illustration. Thanks also to Julia Wiesenberg, Christine Brooks, Mary Young, and Valerie Ahwee at Kent State University Press for making the final process so smooth. I am ever grateful for the support of Valérie, Charlotte, and Sophie in this and in so many other endeavors. Finally, there is Monique, who came up with the title, is the best (and most brutally honest) proofreader in the world, and whose approval for the final product means everything to me.
Introduction
What Is Medical Illustration?
Medical illustration is a poorly understood profession—not just by the lay public but by many healthcare professionals and scientists as well. If people are a little bit familiar with the term, chances are they will mention Frank Netter, who has taught generations of North American medical professionals. His vivid paintings are appreciated in equal measures for their beautiful, colorful renditions of anatomy, and for a feeling of nostalgia ( Fig. 1 ). Andreas Vesalius will probably be mentioned as well (undoubtedly a giant in illustrated anatomy but not an illustrator himself), as will Leonardo da Vinci and, sometimes, Max Brödel—arguably the most influential medical illustrator of modern times and the founder of the first graduate school of medical illustration in North America. Needless to say, that doesn’t start to cover the rich history of medical illustration, or the omnipresence of illustrations in medical practice, education, the pharmaceutical and surgical technology industries, the medicolegal field, social media, scientific research, and so many other disciplines today.

Fig. 1: Frank Netter, Neurogenic and hormonal pathways in rage reaction in The Netter Collection of Medical Illustrations, Physiology and Functional Neuroanatomy , p. 216. (Netter medical illustration used with permission of Elsevier. All rights reserved.)
Medical illustrators can be forgiven a sense of frustration for being so underappreciated. But what makes them really mad is when someone invariably refers to a medical illustration in a slide presentation as a “cartoon.” That implies a simplistic divertissement to lighten up an otherwise drab text slide. Au contraire —a good illustration doesn’t just complement an explanation, it replaces it; clearer than any text could be, it draws viewers in and helps them understand a difficult concept, a complex anatomic relationship, or an intricate operation.
A Little History
Most humans are visual beings, and many of us like to draw. But medical illustrators are really good at it. And while they tend to have a scientific background, or at least an affinity for the sciences, their genealogy is an artistic one first. A very select few have been great artists and great scientists, and one of the greatest was Leonardo da Vinci. Half a century before Vesalius, he had performed countless dissections and sketched his findings in his many notebooks. Da Vinci’s drawings of a human fetus in utero, the musculoskeletal anatomy of the trunk, the heart of an ox are all iconic images that are familiar to most of us. Of course, few individuals have had the talent and scientific curiosity of da Vinci. Thus, anatomists, physicians, surgeons, and other scientists since the dawn of modern medicine needed to seek the collaboration of talented artists. This association has endured throughout the centuries, thanks to a combination of shared and complementary qualities.
As medical knowledge grew, illustrators were there to document. The first age of discovery in medicine was the unraveling of human anatomy. Andreas Vesalius, in 1543, published his seminal work, De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Of the fabric of the human body), in which he described in detail the skeletal, muscular, and visceral anatomy of a human ( Fig. 2 ). 1 Of course, his work is mostly remembered for its gorgeously accurate illustrations, and his work is so well known because of the invention, exactly a century earlier, of the printing press. In an era when physiology was in its infancy and medical treatments were often painful, sometimes barbaric, and always unscientific, anatomy was the leading medical discipline. Vesalius, Gabriele Fallopio, Govert Bidloo, Xavier Bichat, and William and John Hunter—bridging more than two centuries—all advanced the field of anatomy, and all associated themselves with artists to illustrate their findings.

Fig. 2: Andreas Vesalius, De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Of the fabric of the human body), 1543, p. 372.
When, a century after Vesalius, William Harvey described the principles of blood circulation, he used illustrations