This is the May 1944 issue of What’s New, which was published by Abbott Laboratories. It has a stirring patriotic cover of a young girl and a younger boy running through a field painted by Lily Harmon. It has the tag line “We owe it to them – BUY MORE BONDS.”

Throughout this issue is special “war art” of “Sketches from an Abbott War Artist’s Notebook.” This multi-page reproduction of artist Kerr Eby’s artwork from the invasion of the Japanese-held island of Tarawa is both powerful and poignant. Eby’s sketches bring to life the costs of war in very human terms.

WHAT’S NEW was sent to physicians, hospital administrators and others in healthcare by Abbott Laboratories. The magazine contains a number of articles on new drugs, medical procedures, etc. – much of it learned from battlefield surgeons during the war. There are 32 pages and the magazine measures approximately 9.75 x 12.5 inches.

Lily Harmon (born Lillian Perelmutter; 1912–1998) was an American visual artist. She studied at the Yale School of Fine Arts in New Haven, and then went on to the Académie Colarossi in Paris, and lastly at the Art Students League of New York.

While studying in Paris, she would often get up at 6:30 in the morning, take the bus around town, and sketch people doing their daily work. She also studied textile design where she learned a lot about abstract lines, and color.

Harmon illustrated books in the period 1945-1976, including by such authors as Franz Kafka, Andre Gide, Jean-Paul Sartre, Thomas Mann, and Edith Wharton.

Harmon was the subject of a 50-year retrospective exhibition in 1982 which was organized by the Wichita Art Museum in Kansas and later traveled to the Provincetown Art Association and the Butler Institute of American Art. Her first solo gallery show took place at Associated American Artists in 1994, in New York. Since then her works have been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco, etc.

Harmon was a member of the Artists Equity Association, the Provincetown Art Association, and the National Academy of Design. Later in her life, she was a professor for painting at the National Academy of Design from 1974 until her retirement. She published an autobiography, Freehand, in 1981 (Simon & Schuster).

Kerr Eby (October 19, 1889 – November 18, 1946) was a Canadian illustrator best known for his renderings of soldiers in combat in both World War I and World War II. He is held in a similar regard to Harvey Dunn and the other famous illustrators dispatched by the government to cover the First World War.

Enlisting in the Army in 1917, Eby served in an ambulance crew and later as a camoufleur. Although unable to acquire an artist's commission to cover the war, he created many memorable and haunting images of soldiers both in combat and living their daily lives on the front.

In the 1920s and 1930s, Eby continued to occasionally generate pieces related to his experience, and worked many of his early sketches into completed lithographs. These images were eventually collected and distributed in the book WAR, which remains in the collection of many libraries today. Notable images in this collection include a haunting drawing of marines retreating across the countryside beneath a menacing black cloud. In 1930, he was elected into the National Academy of Design as an Associate member, and became a full Academician in 1934. He was also a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists. His work was part of the painting event in the art competition at the 1932 Summer Olympics.

As the United States returned to war in 1941, Eby attempted to reenlist but was denied because of his age. He found service instead in the combat artists program created by Abbott Laboratories to cover the war. He operated primarily in the Pacific during World War II, where he landed with the Marines on Tarawa and Guadalcanal. He created many of his strongest works, and put his life on the line to capture the experiences he shared with those soldiers.

Eby contracted a tropical disease while covering the war in Bougainville, and died at his home in Westport, Connecticut in 1946. He left behind a great body of completed work and much that was still in progress. These drawings, prints, and paintings serve as both historical record and primary documentation of the American experience of war in the 20th century.