Enchondroma of the scapula,

1863

Henry J. Bigelow, a physician at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, commissioned Black, a well-known local portrait and landscape photographer, to document one of his patients, a twenty-six-year-old farmer with a rapidly growing noncancerous tumor of the scapula. Although the resulting images served primarily as medical illustrations, Black treated his subject with grace and dignity. The patient’s pose, his head upturned and in three-quarter profile, recalls that of a suffering saint while also allowing the viewer to scrutinize the size, shape, and location of the tumor.