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Obtenir des Epreuves” [“Process of Messrs. Meade Brothers
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type, Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1981.
MEDICAL PHOTOGRAPHY
Medical photography is a broad term that encompasses
photographs of patients, ward and operating theatre
scenes, photomicrography, portraits of doctors, etc. The
term ‘medical’ is synonymous with the word ‘clini-
cal.’ Medical photography is however, the term most
commonly used to refer to photographs of patients,
diseased body parts, organs, and specimens. Medical
photographs, i.e., those with a clinical content, are im-
ages of somatic diseases of the body and are distinct
from images of clinical psychiatric diseases. Although
the apparent visual signs of disease were often the main
reason that led to the photograph being taken, in the fi nal
image, the pathology may only appear as an incidental
element, disguised in conventions of nineteenth century
portraiture. Many of the clinical conventions that we
associate with medical photography such as the before
and after shot, plain backgrounds, or the black box
placed over the patient’s eyes did not develop until the
late nineteenth century. Improvements in photographic
technology also helped the medical-clinical photograph
to become part of a clinicians teaching collection and
or clinical records.
Writing in 1931, Josef Maria Eder published an ac-
count of the history of photography in Europe, which was
later translated by Edward Epstean in 1945 (Eder 1931).
In the chapter on scientifi c photography, Eder describes
what he believes to be one of the fi rst applications of pho-
tography to medicine. This was in the fi eld of photomi-
crography. He outlined the pioneering work by the French
physician Alfred Donné (1801–1878) demonstrated in his
cytology atlas, Cours de Microscopie (1845), made with
Jean Bernard Léon Foucault (1819–1869).
One of the earliest clinical portraits identifi ed by
many was a calotype taken by the eminent Scottish
photographers, David Octavius Hill (1802–1870) and
Robert Adamson (1821–1848), sometime between 1843
and 1847 (Wilson 1973). The image is taken directly
face on to the sitter, and cropped above her waist, per-
haps in order to draw the attention of the viewer to the
upper half of the body. Wilson suggests that:
[T]he clothing around her neck has been drawn back
to show the goitre. This photograph contrasts strongly
with their other works, in which artistic arrangement of
the sitter is a main consideration. This must be one of
the earliest clinical photographs, if not indeed the fi rst.
(Wilson 1973, 104)
Wilson attempts to contextualise the image by sug-
gesting tentative links between Hill and Adamson and
Dr James Inglis (1813–1851), who had an interest in
goitre. However, if one looks at this photograph within
the broader context of Hill and Adamson’s work it
becomes apparent that the sitter’s dress and bonnet are
strikingly similar to those worn by fi sherwomen in Hill
and Adamson ‘Newhaven’ photographs, taken during
the early-to-mid 1840s.
In general histories of photography, little reference is
made to medical-clinical photography. Those who do,
on the whole, tend to cite Dr Hugh Welch Diamond’s
(1809–1886) psychiatric portraits taken at the Surrey
County Asylum in Twickenham. Using Frederick Scott
Archer’s (1813–1857) wet-collodion process, Diamond
used photographs for diagnostic purposes and case
notes. He also showed the patients their photographic
portraits following treatment for therapeutic purposes.
Heimann Wolff Berend (1809–1873) was another
doctor who used photography as part of his clinical
practice from the 1850s. Berend founded an orthopaedic
clinic in Berlin and employed a professional, L. Haase
to photograph his patients before and after surgery.
Berend’s collection contains hundreds of photographs
which combine both portrait and clinical conventions.
Many medical men began to publish their photo-
graphic endeavours in books and medical journals.
Theodor Billroth (1829–1894) the Viennese surgeon
and pioneer in abdominal surgery began to use pho-
tography while working at the Chirurugische Klinik in
Zürich. During the 1860s he employed J. Ganz to take
stereoscopic photographs to accompany cases notes
published in 1867 (Gernsheim 1961). Similarly the
French neurologist, Dr Guillaume Amand Benjamin
Duchenne (1806–1875) was a pioneer in the use of pho-
tography as a medium for observation, representation
and knowledge in medicine. Duchenne photographed
patients undergoing electric stimulation of their facial
muscles and published the results in his book Mécanisme
de la Physionomie Humaine [The Mechanisms of Hu-
man Facial Expression] in 1862. In the same year he
published a book containing images of pathological
cases including ataxia. Duchenne de Boulogne was one
of the fi rst to use clinical photographs in his book on
neurological disorders published in 1863.
In the field of dermatology Alexander Balmano
Squire (1836–1908) published Photographs (Coloured
from Life) of the Diseases of the Skin in 1865. Inspired
by Squire’s work A. Hardy (1811–1893), a doctor at the