Wednesday, December 15, 2021

The Miller Collection: Antiquarian Medical Books, A Visual and Historical Feast, Back Home at VCU

 











In 1926 Dr. Joseph Lyon Miller, an alumnus of the Medical College of Virginia and a practicing physician in West Virginia, offered to the Richmond Academy of Medicine a valuable collection of old medical books. Dr. Miller was both a renaissance man and antiquarian book collector.

The Miller Collection includes rare portraits, prints, letters, and silhouettes of medical significance besides its 1600 volumes. Among the important items are Andreas Vesalius's De Fabrica Humāni Corporis , second edition, Guy de Chauliac's Chirurgia Magna,1499; Aureolus Paracelsus's Chirurgia Magna & Minor, 1573, a rare first English edition of Ambrose Paré's Works, 1634; Carbon's Libro del Arte; Pratis's De Pariente et Partu and the first English edition of William Harvey's Anatomical Exercitations,1653.

The Miller Collection is now formally and finally back at The Medical College of Virginia-Virginia Commonwealth University Health Sciences Library- as part of the permanent archive.

Amazing.

Tuesday, December 14, 2021

Fargo Rock City! Read and Rock on!

 

Okay...this is neither a new book (2001) nor was I a metal head growing up, BUT if you are a fan of rock music and fancy a serious yet hilarious reflection of hard rock/heavy metal/glam metal/hair bands of the 1980's, this is the book for you.

Chuck Klosterman is masterful in relating the impact of heavy metal music on teenagers in the 1980s. Although I did not grow up on a farm in North Dakota like Klosterman, we are roughly the same age and I can relate to much of his musical odyssey, experiencing similar radio hits and the rise of MTV.

One need not be a fan of heavy metal to appreciate its massive sonic presence for a decade, commonly in the airwave mix with other rock and new wave acts. Like other genres- disco, punk music, etc, fads come and go. This was no different.

Was metal music high quality musicianship? Who cares, it was present, powerful and exciting (at the time), worth remembering.

Viva le Rock!