Dr. Francois Luks, pediatric surgeon-in-chief at Hasbro Children’s Hospital, used his talents as an artist for the basis of his new book, titled “MedSpeak Illuminated: The Art and Practice of Medical Illustration.” Luks, who as a medical student drew a daily comic strip for several newspapers, has since had many of his drawings published as part of research studies and in journals and textbooks.
About half of the illustrations in “MedSpeak Illuminated” are Luks’ own.
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Luks, who is also a professor of surgery at the Warren Alpert Medical School of Brown University, wrote the book after teaching a course on medical illustration at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design.
PBN: Who is your target audience for this book – is it mostly intended for serious medical readers, or is there broader appeal as well?
LUKS: It is primarily aimed at medical professionals, of all types – but I want to believe that the style (Wayne Miller and Sarah Baldwin called it ‘crystal-clear and entertaining’) and the variety of topics makes it appealing to anyone interested in art, history of art and medicine, and any form of (modern) visual communication (including social media, comics, humanism – and learning how to draw) may find it a good read.
PBN: How are medical illustrations used today, and are they different from the posters with diagrams that patients often see on the wall at the doctor’s office?
LUKS: Medical illustrations for patients (like posters in a doctor’s office) are one side of visual communication in medicine. Medical illustration is also still a very important part of medical education – whether students, residents or even peers. The style and approach will be different, of course (for example, teaching a young surgeon how to perform a particular operation, or explain a complex cellular process to a medical student). It is also a big part of medicolegal proceedings – medical illustrators hired to explain a case to a jury; it has a big place in advertising (print or TV), in scientific research (illustrating grants, scientific articles, etc.); it has recently become a staple on social media, as more and more journals and societies are on line and put out snippets of research or information, in the form of “visual abstracts:” three-panel strips summarizing the findings of a study with graphics, icons and symbols. And it has veered toward the comics, too: medical comics, or graphic medicine, is a very recent phenomenon that allows clinicians (doctors, nurses, …) to vent their own feelings on workload, burn-out, etc; and patients and families to express their fears, anxieties and other experiences where a long-form essay would be more intimidating. That is part of a return to humanism in medicine, and it ties in nicely with the individual physician explaining a procedure or a condition to a patient using graphics and drawings. That, too, is covered in the book – and the final chapter even gives a lot of useful tips for anyone in medicine who likes to draw and would like to get better.
PBN: Do you use medical illustrations with any of your young patients to help them understand the procedure they’re about to undergo?
LUKS: Most definitely! It is helpful for the (young) children and for their parents; it can be very useful if there is a bit of language barrier; and it clearly sticks better than just words. I have had a few families tell me years later that they kept a quick sketch I made in the moment; in urgent situations, having a drawing can also be a way to retain the information for later. I also know that I am far from the only one – in my experience, most, if not all, doctors draw – whether it’s a scribble or a more elaborate illustration.
PBN: Are the illustrations in the book yours, and has your medical artwork appeared in other publications?
LUKS: Yes, many are mine. In fact, about 90 of the roughly 180 illustrations in the book are mine. Most others are reproductions of classic paintings or older anatomic plates. Over the years, I have had many of my illustrations published in medical journals or textbooks – typically to illustrate a research study. Initially, they were the papers I was writing myself. Then, gradually, colleagues started to ask me for a drawing.
PBN: Your book includes a history of medical illustration – how old is the practice, and is it still evolving today?
LUKS: Medical illustration is as old as medicine – but just like modern medicine (and surgery) is probably only about 300-400 years old, so is the practice of medical illustration, the deliberate reproduction of a scene, an organ, an operation with the explicit goal to explain and clarify. Before that, there was plenty of medical information in paintings and sculptures – all the way back to the cavemen; but the goal was not to teach, and more to show reality. Codified standards of medical illustration came much later. It first started with anatomic plates – think Vesalius, in the 16th century: The printing press had already been invented, and the early anatomists needed their findings to be shown widely. Then, physiology and surgery became the focus of medical progress, and illustrations changed as well, no longer a static image of a body part, but a narrative (of an operation, for example); that required a new language, too – and modern medical illustration borrows elements of comics, with annotations of motion, action, etc. Most recently, there has been such a glut of (scientific) information that doctors can’t possibly process everything. The visual abstract mentioned above are one way to convert complex information into snippets, with simple and well-chosen symbols or icons, not necessarily true to life – but understandable by all. (Yes, medical illustration continues to evolve, and has clearly not been eliminated with the advent of photography and video. A well-designed line drawing of an operation may be more informative than a youtube video of it – just like the line drawings of IKEA are ideal when assembling their furniture.)
The most recent developments include a growing diversity in representing the human body. In the past, young white males were the standard model, even for diseases that only occur in older people, for example. Now, we realize we need to represent everyone. In fact, it can even be life-saving. Classic illustrations of skin conditions, including skin cancer, were typically in fair-skinned people; a melanoma looks very different in dark-skinned patients, for example.
Finally – even when classic paintings ‘happen’ to show a medical condition, without being meant as a true medical illustration, they can be a useful teaching tool. For example, smallpox was eradicated worldwide several decades ago – no doctor has ever seen a patient with the disease – but some classic paintings show the very typical appearance of the disease – and that could be helpful if, heaven forbid, there was an outbreak of the disease, either from a remaining strain from a lab, or from a similar form of the disease – like monkey pox?
Elizabeth Graham is a PBN contributing writer.
