A critical account of the history of Medical Photography in the United Kingdom

Kathy McFall MSc MIMI, Medical Illustration Manager
Gartnavel General Hospital, Glasgow, UK

Introduction and Bibliography This thesis is about the fundamental importance of medical illustration to the modern National Health Service as an educational and diagnostic aid to understanding the human condition and the pathology of disease and suffering. It is suggested that the value of medical photography has never been fully appreciated by the institutions and authorities of professional health-care in the United Kingdom, and that the subject has relied on the enthusiasm of dedicated individuals in order to progress. Nevertheless, a critical awareness of the history of the subject suggests that it should be treated as a mature and valuable aspect of modern medicine.

Chapters One and Two argues that a distinct tradition of medical illustration first emerged in early modern Europe and gives an account of the earliest medical photography in Europe and America, and the role it was allowed in the service of the emerging tradition of modern medicine.

Chapter Three considers how the professional conventions of modern medical photography emerged in the 19th- and early 20th-Centuries through the growth of specialisation, and includes an account of the most important archives in Britain and America which have survived from this formative era.

Chapter Four is an account of the growth of medical illustration departments within British hospitals in the years following the Second World War, and of the limited success of efforts to create a professional body and nationally coherent courses to support trainee practitioners.

Chapters Five and Six are a critical assessment of the status of medical illustration as a profession within the National Health Service today.