My Blog
Welcome to the official blog of Ron Blumenfeld. Be sure to buy my new book, The King’s Anatomist and check out my other writings!
Sometimes You Can Tell a Book by Its Cover
For the past 64 springs, book dealers from around the world set up shop at the New York International Antiquarian Book Fair to exhibit their very best stuff. What kind of stuff? As the Book Fair informs us, “rare books, maps, illuminated manuscripts, fine bindings,...
Five Centuries Later, Andreas Vesalius Flashes His Star Power
Photo: © 2024 Christie’s Images Limited. Copies of Andreas Vesalius’s revolutionary textbook of anatomy, De humani corporis fabrica (“The Structure of the Human Body”), are scattered around the world in libraries and private collections. An intrepid team of Vesalius...
How I Fixed My Image Problem
Thanks to a company called PicRights, International, I discovered I had an image problem. I didn’t go looking for PicRights, International – they came looking for me. PicRights, you see, “provides licensing compliance services to third-party content owners.”...
Vesalius Fans Reconvene – This Time in Antwerp
2014 was a big year for Andreas Vesalius. It was the great anatomist’s 500th birthday – a great milestone if your name is still spoken after five centuries. Devoted Vesalius fans could not let that year pass without gathering on the Greek island of Zakynthos, where he...
Oy! Jewish Medical Students in Renaissance Italy
The year 2022 marked the 800th anniversary of the founding of the University of Padua, one of the oldest universities in the world. The celebration included an exhibition done in conjunction with the Jewish Heritage Museum of Padua that offered a fascinating glimpse...
The Deep Meaning of Listerine
Consumer products come and go. Some exist only for the few weeks before a holiday; others hang around for years, even decades. But others approach immortality, still going strong after a century or more in the marketplace. To name a few: Clorox (1913); Ex-Lax (1906);...