Locating disease spread: cholera to coronavirus and the art of the image
Resource type
Journal article
Creator (person)
Barrett, Katy
Belknap, Geoffrey
Date published
December 6, 2021
Abstract
This article considers the history of medical image-making to shed light on an aspect of the COVID-19 pandemic. Starting from a contemporary art commission in the Science Museum's ‘Medicine: The Wellcome Galleries’, we look at the role of image production and presentation in understanding the spread of disease. From the intertwined histories of art and scientific image-making, we explore five examples of iconic medical images, by John Snow, Florence Nightingale, Arthur Schuster, Donald Caspar and Aaron Klug, ending with a model of the coronavirus by the Cambridge University Laboratory of Molecular Biology. We trace how images have provided the means for discovery, for description and for diagnosis and outline the different ways in which diseases have been located in the history of the medical image: in the community, in the body, in the cell and on the image itself.
Journal title
Interface Focus
Volume
11
Issue
6
Publisher
The Royal Society
eISSN
2042-8901
Official URL
Rights statement
In Copyright