A BACKWARD GLANCETwenty‐five years ago

Abstract

Two examples of specialized work undertaken by medical illustrators were featured in this issue. Reconstruction of the heads of three ancient Egyptian mummies by RAH Neave, Assistant Director of Medical Illustration at the Medical School, Manchester, described in great detail, and illustrated with copious photographs, how the faces and heads of the Egyptians were built up in clay from the skulls. This was part of a Manchester Museum Mummy Project to attempt to produce busts which represented as closely as possible the appearance of the persons when alive; these would form the models for drawings and paintings for display alongside the mummies. To check the accuracy of the technique, photographs were taken of the heads of cadavers in the Department of Anatomy in the Medical School; when the students had completed their dissections the heads were made available for reconstruction of the soft tissues by staff who had not seen the originals. With the exception of the detail of the noses, the reconstructions matched the photographs fairly well. Transillumination of the infant skull by Martin Johns, Deputy Director of Medical Illustration at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Sick Children, London, discussed the many attempts made to design a suitable apparatus to examine an infant head by transillumination. This too was copiously illustrated, many of the photographs being in colour. The equipment ranged from a wooden box to a sophisticated apparatus built for the hospital by the Ford Motor Company, and several photographs illustrate the results obtained by the light source. The possible uses of the apparatus include, in smaller hospitals, a means of identifying those cases which should be referred to a larger centre for a CAT scan or ventriculography.