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"Draw what can't be seen,
watch what's never been done,
and tell thousands about it without saying a word"
-Association of Medical Illustrators
Definition: The process by which a trained professional
fuses medical and bioscientific knowledge with a proficiency in visual
rendering technique to produce scientifically accurate material. The result
is presented in a format that is aesthetically appealing to the eye without
sacrificing scientific accuracy or instructional value. -Graphic Pulse,
Inc.
A Brief History
of Medical Illustration
Humans have been depicting the human body through art
since art began. Around 13,000 BC early man placed a hand on a wall of
the Lascaux caves in the Dordogne region of what is now France and blew
pigment around his hand to create a siloutette. Another painted the human
figure being rushed by a bull carrying a wound with protruding intestines.
From 2613 to 332 BC, the Egyptians obtained knowledge of internal anatomy
while preparing the dead for mummification. They painted the human form
with consistent proportions and even tools of dissection to tell stories
and to document their history. Around 500 BC, The Greeks developed an
accurate sense of surface anatomy and demonstrated it through their figure
sculptures. By 1517, Leonardo da Vinci had dissected 30 men and women
of all ages, as well as countless snakes, monkeys, birds and frogs to
produce an amazing collection of sketches and notes representing the first
precisely accurate medical illustrations of external and internal anatomy.
In 1543,"On the Fabric of the Human Body," the most impressive 16th century
volume on comparative anatomy was published. It contained a collection
of prints made from woodblocks cut under the direction of the Venetian
master, Titian. All it's contents were based on sketches provided
by Andreas Vesalius, an Italian surgeon at the University of Padua, who
gained a reputation for his entertaining public dissections of the human
body. 1632, oil painting portraits were commissioned by attending surgeons
during public dissections, which continued to gain popularity. "The Anatomy
Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp" by Rembrandt van Rijn depicts an arm dissection
of an executed criminal accompanied by portraits of several eager surgeons
in full color. In the late 1800s Thomas Eakins produced realistic depictions
of anatomy lessons in Philadelphia using oil paint, brushes, and knowledge
from his many dissections of the human body. He taught at the Pennsylvania
Academy of Fine Arts stressing the importance of anatomical knowledge
toward the artistic depiction of the figure. He hauled dead horses in
for dissection but was fired when exposing a nude model for figure study.
1894, Max Brodel, the father of modern medical illustration began working
for the surgeons at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Brodel had been traditionally
trained in Liepzig Germany. He had carefully observed thousands of surgeries
and autopsies. Using carbon dust on chalk-coated board, Brodel produced
breathtakingly realistic renderings of surgical procedures that served
to teach the surgeons of the hospital exactly what to look for during
a procedure without all the blood, puss, and gore that exists on a photograph.
1911, Max Brodel founded and subsequently directed the first
medical illustration program in the world at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.
In 1945, The Association of Medical Illustrators (AMI) was founded. By
1967, the AMI established a set of educational standards to be used toward
the accreditation of graduate programs in medical illustration.
Training of
the Modern Medical Illustrator
Today, the Commission on Accreditation of Allied Health Educational Programs
in cooperation with the Accreditation Review Committee of the AMI has
designated 5 graduate programs as meeting or exceeding the accreditation
criteria of educational quality. The following highly competitive programs
each accept between 3 and 12 students per year:
- The
University of Toronto has been recognized as having the standards
of the schools accredited by the CAAHEP. It remains unaccredited simply
because of it's location outside of the United States.
The majority of medical illustrators in the United States
and Canada hold a master's degree in medical illustration from one
of these schools. These programs include rigorous training in areas of
medicine such as gross anatomy, physiology, embryology, pathology, neuroanatomy,
and histology, among others. Medical illustrators also gain a prowess
in various visual media from classic techniques such as pen & ink, watercolor,
airbrush, and carbon dust to digital techniques in illustration, modeling,
animation, and interactive media.
The Medical
Illustrator's Profession
There is a wide variety of avenues that a medical illustrator can pursue
professionally once training is complete. Illustration work ranges from
highly realistic, anatomically precise, instructional material to imaginative,
conceptual, editorial illustration. One may also produce medical 2-dimensional
or 3-dimensional computer animation, interactive CD ROMs, life-like prosthetics,
anatomical models, medical exhibits, medical presentations used in courtroom
proceedings, medical journal graphics, pharmaceutical advertising, marketing
materials for surgical instrumentation, patient education material, web
sites containing health or medical content, etc. Although the training
is quite specialized, the creative reach of a medical illustrator is considerably
broad. Always throughout, the medical illustrator remains a highly respected
thoroughly trained left-brain-right-brain professional.
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