Historical Reflections: The Medical Heritage Center Blog

Frank H. Netter, MD is recognized as the foremost medical illustrator of the human body and how it works. Netter was born in New York on April 25, 1906. In high school he obtained a scholarship to study at the National Academy of Design. After further studying at the Art Students League of New York and with private teachers, he began a commercial art career. He quickly achieved success and was doing work for the Saturday Evening Post and The New York Times. At the urging of his family, Netter gave up art and studied to be a surgeon at New York University.

Netter found that it was easier for him to take notes in pictures; and, soon faculty members recognized his artistic talents, and Netter began to pay for part of his medical education by illustrating lectures and textbooks. Netter graduated in 1931 opening a private surgical practice. He continued to accept art commissions to make money until his practice got off the ground. Through his art career he was making more money than through his surgical practice, so he gave up the practice.

In 1938 Netter was hired by the CIBA Pharmaceutical Company to work on a promotional flyer for a heart medication. He designed a folder cut in the shape of and elaborately depicting a heart, which was sent to physicians. Many doctors wrote back asking for more heart flyers without the advertising copy. Netter went on to design similar product advertisements depicting other organs. When that project ended, Netter was commissioned to prepare small folders of pathology plates later collected into the first CIBA Collection of Medical Illustrations. Netter went on to illustrate a series of atlases that became his life’s work. They are a group of volumes individually devoted to each organ system, which cover human anatomy, embryology, physiology, pathology, and pertinent clinical features of the diseases arising in each system. Into his eighth decade, Netter continued to create medical illustrations, it is said that his portfolio includes over 4,000 works. Netter died September 17, 1991 but his work lives on in books and electronic forms that continue to educate healthcare professionals worldwide.

The Medical Heritage Center rare book collection contains three of Netter’s works: The Ciba Collection of Medical Illustrations (1948); A Compilation of Paintings on the Normal and Pathologic Anatomy of the Nervous System (1958); and, The Vital Organs in Hypertension (1968).