Abstract

This article builds on scholarship in technical communication, medical rhetoric, and visual communication and represents a portion of a grounded study of one medical workplace setting's visualization practices. Specifically, the author explores how medical images—as technologically and rhetorically rendered artifacts—make “present” (Perelman & Olbrechts-Tyteca, 1969 Perelman , C. , & Olbrechts-Tyteca , L. ( 1969 ). The new rhetoric . Notre Dame , IN : University of Notre Dame Press . [Google Scholar]) the material characteristics of disease and thereby perceptually and argumentatively afford the construction of knowledge about future cancer-care action.