Helen MacArthur in her office at the Royal Victoria Hospital, 1953

The career of medical illustrator, especially for a woman, was of interest to the public: “A pleasant piece of Canadian countryside or an attractive arrangement of flowers certainly aren’t guaranteed to raise the painting enthusiasm of artist Helen MacArthur. But show her skeletons and gruesome sections of anatomy – and Miss MacArthur is fired with creative inspiration. Helen sketches in black and white or colour and works in a studio. But there the similarity ends. For a lot of Helen’s time is spent in the operating theatre at the Royal Victoria Hospital, Montreal, where she’s employed as a medical illustrator […] While she’s busy in her studio at the hospital, Helen’s closest companion is a skeleton” The Daily Gleaner, 28 February, 1956.