Credit: © The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.10024
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    Portrait of Elizabeth Powis showing a leg amputation

    Date
    1845
    Creator
    Leonard [?], Lithographer
    After
    R. W. Bradley, Medical researcher
    Object type
    Library reference
    Tracts/+21/3
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (print): 250mm
    width (print): 360mm
    Subject
    Content object
    human body
       > leg
    Description
    View of Elizabeth Powis, reclining on a curtained bed, propped up against pillows. She holds her dress and petticoat to one side, showing the scar and stump from the amputation of her left leg at the hip. Powis wears a dark red or purple dress with a white lace collared undershirt. She has a blue and gold shawl and a bonnet with flowers and ribbon.

    Plate 1 from the publication A memoir on amputation of the thigh at the hip joint, (with a successful case) by William Sands Cox FRS (London, 1845).

    This surgical case is described within the text. Elizabeth Powis, a 23-year old (in 1845) seamstress, had undergone an amputation at the knee six years before admission to the Queen’s Hospital, Birmingham, England in 1842, for additional treatment. As a result of the morbid condition of the remaining leg, it was removed by operation on 1 November 1842.

    Inscribed below: “Bradley, del. Leonard lith. Reeve, Brothers imp:”
    Associated place
    <The World>
       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
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