Blog: How Art Can Enhance Diagnostic Skill

"But then every time I heard the noun 'artist' it was preceded with the adjective 'starving,' " said Dr. Wolf, who is professor and chair of the department of dermatology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. "So I changed my mind and went into medicine, and, I must say, medicine in general and dermatology specifically have turned out to be terrific careers for somebody with the interest that I have in art, history, and literature, and the humanities and medicine."

During his study of art, Dr. Wolf came across two artists that have produced pieces illustrating skin disease, Francisco de Goya and Domenico Ghirlandaio.

One of Goya's paintings of King Charles IV and his family, depicts s a woman with what appears to be a melanoma on her left temple (West. J. Med. 1995;163:85).

Ghirlandaio's well-known painting, An Old Man and his Grandson, is a "terrific representaiton of rhinophyma," he said. 

In the video below, filmed at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Dermatology in San Diego, Dr. Wolf discussed a piece of art from his collection where careful observation revealed that the drawing's title was not the diagnosis.

For dermatologists, being interested in the visual arts has its own advantages, he said. For one, dermatology is a very visual specialty, so studying art helps enhance the power of observation. 

"In terms of the visual arts, we tend to think about observing a painting, asking questions, analyzing it, and then resolving the questions. In terms of diagnosis in dermatology, we talk about observation, differential diagnosis, and diagnosis. So these are two very parallel pathways," Dr. Wolf explained.  

Also, for those interested in the history of medicine, visual images can be very useful for pinpointing the exact time and location of a specific disease.

"Art can simply strengthen your powers of observation," said Dr. Wolf. "If you learn to look at a work of art, and carefully observe the dimensions, the content, the strategy of work of art, it's very similar to what we do in a clinical setting. 

--Naseem S. Miller