If you have ever read a medical textbook or looked through a patient education pamphlet in the doctor’s office, chances are very good that a medical illustrator was involved in creating the images. Medical illustrators combine artistic ability and detailed scientific and medical knowledge—as well as understanding of surgical and clinical procedures—to produce a range of visuals for use in textbooks, pamphlets, exhibits, instructional animations, legal procedures, didactic models, and other communication media.
Medical illustration has a rich history, and the spirit of the profession is carried on by hundreds of medical illustrators today. Although medical illustration techniques have evolved alongside the practice of medicine from its origins—as exemplified by the works of Leonardo da Vinci and the exquisite illustrations in Andreas Vesalius’s De Corpus Fabrica Humani, as well as the celebrated atlases of Dr. Frank Netter—the profession of medical illustration is relatively recent.
At the end of the 19th century, Max Brödel, a talented artist from Leipzig, Germany, was brought to Baltimore, Maryland to the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. He illustrated for a number of distinguished physicians, including William Halstead, Harvey Cushing, and Howard Kelly, and almost singlehandedly created and defined the profession of medical illustration. While his breathtaking illustration work in pen and ink and carbon dust—a technique he invented—continues to inspire generations of illustrators, Brödel’s most significant legacy was the creation of the first academic department of medical illustration. In 1911, he became the first Director of the Department of Art as Applied to Medicine at Johns Hopkins, which still trains aspiring medical illustrators to this day. Other medical illustration programs were founded across the United States and Canada. Four accredited graduate programs currently exist:
- The Department of Art as Applied to Medicine at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine. The department was established in 1911; in 1959, a two-year Master of Arts degree program in Medical and Biological Illustration was established due to the efforts of Ranice Crosby, the second Director of the program and the first woman to head a department at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.
- The Biomedical Visualization Program at the University of Illinois at Chicago’s College of Applied Health Sciences. The program was founded in 1921 by Thomas Smith Jones, co-founder of the Association of Medical Illlustrators (AMI).
- The Medical Illustration Graduate Program of the College of Allied Health Sciences at Augusta University. The first Master of Science degree in Medical Illustration at MCG was awarded in 1951.
- The Master of Science in Biomedical Communications at the University of Toronto. The graduate program was founded in 1945 by Maria Wishart, a student of Brödel.
Brödel’s students and graduates from these institutions would transform medical illustration into a well established profession, and medical illustrators would go on to work in universities, hospitals, research institutes, clinics, and beyond. Brödel’s students were also destined to become a large percentage of the founding members of the Association of Medical Illustrators in 1945. The professional objectives of the AMI are to promote the study and advancement of medical illustration and allied fields of visual communication, and to promote understanding and cooperation with the medical profession and related health science professions.
Source: ami.org, condensed from text by Robert Demarest and Edith Tagrin in The History of the Association of Medical Illustrators 1945-1995