A Backward Glance for Tempus

In the past 17 years I have read and reviewed every issue of the Journal of Audiovisual Media in Medicine which had been published 25 years earlier so I feel that I got an insight into the history of medical illustration. An article by Carole Reeves was printed in 1980 on illustration of medicine in ancient Egypt in about 2800 BC (Reeves, 1980). Aristotle in Athens apparently used drawings for teaching anatomy about 370 BC, Leonardo de Vinci prepared a comprehensive series of drawings of the human figure in 1489 and Versalius published illustrations of the human body in de Humani Corporis Fabrica in 1543 (Donald, 1986). A major book of medical illustrations was published in England in 1858 entitled Anatomy: Descriptive and Surgical. The text was written by Dr Henry Gray and the pen and ink drawings were by Dr Henry Vandyke Carter. The publishers wanted to record both names on the cover of the first edition but Dr Gray objected and the numerous editions published since have been known as Gray’s Anatomy (Richardson, 2008).

Medicine has constantly taken advantage of new techniques and equipment to communicate with the profession and the public. The first presentations of film to the public in Britain were on 20 February 1896 and a year later, in March 1897, Dr John Macintyre used film to allow him to examine the movement of a knee joint using his recently acquired Roentgen-ray tube (Anon., 1897).

During World War 2 a wide range of teaching, both public and professional was adopted. The Central Office of Information produced posters and dozens of short films on health advice for showing in cinemas throughout the land; these included animated cartoons and the portrayal of errors and their resolution by Dr Richard Massingham. A series of booklets on the treatment of wartime injuries illustrated with some excellent photographs was made available to clinicians. After the war the film became a major medium for instruction and in 1944 the Scientific Film Association (SFA) was established with a powerful medical committee which included several medical illustrators from hospitals which had established illustration departments. Its first task was to collaborate with the Royal Society of Medicine (RSM) in compiling and reviewing medical films; a catalogue of some 200 films was published jointly by the RSM and SFA in 1948. The SFA Catalogue of Medical Films was published in 1952 and information on some 1700 films on Medicine and allied subjects was published in 1966 jointly by the SFA and Film Centre (International) Ltd.

In 1950, the British Medical Association (BMA) took the view that photography and art had a unique role to play in medicine and decided that its journal committee should launch a quarterly journal entitled Medical and Biological Illustration (M&BI). The committee was composed primarily of BMA members. The inaugural meeting of the Institute of Medical and Biological Illustration (IMBI) took place in September 1968 and included many of the members of the SFA medical committee. Discussions soon started on whether or not IMBI should adopt the publication of Medical and Biological Illustration as its official journal. The BMA insisted that as the journal was the responsibility of its journal committee it should appoint the editor and board. It was admitted, however, that the journal had only 974 subscribers and was losing some £3,000 a year. A compromise was reached and the increase of some 292 subscriptions from IMBI members raised the circulation to 1258 copies. The BMA relinquished responsibility for publishing M&BI in 1970 and the journal became the official publication of the Institute. Its name was changed in 1978 to the Journal of Audiovisual Media in Medicine.

Since then the journal has recorded procedures and equipment which have come available. The wide range of topics has included the zoom lens, computer generated graphics and, more recently, digital photography. It has been a fascinating read and I hope that ‘Backward Glance’ will continue. Perhaps an occasional (or regular) review of articles which appeared fifty years ago might be interesting.

We would like to congratulate and thank Dr. Essex-Lopresti on the 17 years of fascinating articles which have allowed us to keep an eye on the past whilst reporting the current and informing the future. They have inspired an expansion of the Backward Glance section in recent years, which have since been assigned a section editor and now include even further exploration into the history of not only the journal but the profession as a whole. Whilst we will continue to seek and publish papers for ‘A Backward Glance’ we will also continue to look back at the journal archives to provide you an insight into past papers via our social media channels.