Book 2, 2012
Still a rainy day and still on holidays so have time to look at another of my quirky collection.
This one is Modern Medical Counsellor, compiled by Hubert O. Swartout in collaboration with thirty-one leading medical specialists - a revised edition published in 1962. (I was ten years old) It is 992 pages long.
It begins with sixteen pages of colour plates of illustrations of skin rashes and diseases; cancer of the breast,tongue and lip; appearances of diseases of the eye, skin rashes in specific diseases and so on - all appropriately gruesome.
The highlight of this edition is the addition, in the middle of the book, on bright yellow pages, advice on 'Survival in Atomic Bombing'. On the last of these pages is a poster of a group of concerned people (doctor, nurse, ambulance man). The caption reads - Prepare now for Defence in Time of Atomic War.
Some terrific advice in a chapter titled "Growing Old Gracefully' is indeed apt for a person who is reaching the age of sixty this year. (Me)
"for association with younger people as well as with one's own age helps to kep a person young in spirit. Whenever it is possible to keep such a custom alive, all elderly people at least should strive to do so." (Love all my younger friends.)
"Many of the signs of age cannot be hidden, and nobody should try to put on a false front of youthfulness. The 'flapper' grandmother, depending on girlish clothes, dyed hair, the art of the beautician, and coquettish ways to bolster her personality usually succeeds only in making herself pitiful or ridiculous. The "foxy' grandfather with as youthful a style and similar hair dye, gaudy ties and socks, and amorous looks at the girls, does no better. Both of them fool nobody but themselves." (Oh dear - I can almost hear Hubert's sniff of disapproval and see his little mealy mouth saying this. Hubert - I'll try to stay away from acting coquettish!!!)
The infectious disease chapter includes poliomyelitus - a disease we were still fearful of in the early sixties. I remember being given the vaccine (a drop of syrup on a spoon) in high school - so after 1965. This author notes -"Dr Jonas Salk has perfected a vaccine which gives promise of much value in preventing infantile paralysis, and even better vaccines may eventually be devised." (We were all vaccinated against smallpox in the sixties too - and I believe that no case has been recorded of smallpox since the seventies because of this world wide campaign.)
Love the advice for treatment of the bubonic plague.
1. Keep the patient in bed.
2. Control the fever by means of cool sponges and cool enemas. (Watch out my kids if you ever catch the plague. I'm right up on the treatment now.)
After the general index comes an index of symptoms: here's one-
Semiconsciousness, with rigid body and closed eyes, refusing to talk, and no jerky movements............ HYSTERIA!!!!! (Then again the patient could be just plain drunk.)
And another-
Shrivelling and atrophy of skin of female genitals, with a narrowing of the vaginal opening................
Kraurosis vulvae (Gonna watch out for this one.)
And my favourite so far-
Red and watery eyes............
Acute alcoholism!! (What the???)
Nowadays, I guess, folks with any symptoms can Google them. I wonder what diagnosis on-line sites give for the above symptoms. Please let me know if you find out.
Monday 16 January 2012
Book One - 2012
A rainy day and last day of my holidays so aimlessly began perusing my library shelves. A small tatty book, "Bibliophily or Booklove" is first to dip into: James F Willis was the author; published in 1921 in Boston and New York. It was originally priced at $1.00. The dust jacket, although browned with age and torn is still intact. The dedication is to S.R.C and C.A.L. Loyal and steadfast.
This small book has six chapters and only 83 pages. Within those, though, are some gems:
" The booklover is the richest and the happiest of men, however humble his station may be: it keeps him from vulgar company and pastimes, and is the most efficacious means for obtaining all the amenities of culture."
"they lunched with Plutarch and supped with Plato."
"They are not always what the world knows as practical, for spiritual development seldom produces dexterity in the baser organs."
"what food is to the body, books are to the soul"
"little men so often write just to say something; big men never write until they have something to say."
' the common books may afford enjoyment, if we are cheap enough to wish for anything as plebeian as mere enjoyment; but it is only the books called literature - the Great Books- that can enrich our life;: the books that inspire and enforce are far more needful than those that instruct and amuse - a man's book company is an index of his soul."
"they impel us to be and to become, to dare and to do."
" A mere collection of books is not a library - a bookshop is a collection of books. A library is an organism that develops with the soul of its owner;"
"Newspapers and magazines are mainly idle things for the idle hours of idle people; to read them properly is one of the supreme acts of presence-of-mind. They are mostly as soulless as the syndicates that publish them, and the chances are ten-to-one that that they shall waste our time or mislead us, or both." (Oh, Rupert Murdoch please read this.)
" It is only the intellectual loafer and the moral paralytic that lolls over the trash and the filth of cheap fiction: nwspapers and magazines have their place in the world: but light-reading has nothing for anybody but distraction, dissipation and debauchery. Debilitating waste of head and heart in aimless, promiscuous, vapid reading in the poisonous exhaltations of book-garbage - this is misuse of reading, the sin of it. So much of the shallow conceit and the opinionated infallibility which prevails today is attributable quite as much to inferior reading as to the smattering of the school-mills." (SCHOOL-MILLS!!!! Love it! Will use it.)
"The public libraries!! When eighty percent of the books they distribute is inferior fiction full of fribbles and oddities and monstrosities, a public library is anything but a public benefit!"
"almost all the public library patrons have weak book-stomachs able to digest nothing stonger than the inspid society novel, and nothing purer than the mud of newspapers and magazines."
__________________________________________________________________________________
Ah - I love the sanctimonious tone of this writer; I love his sharp criticisms and his obvious enjoyment of the use of aliteration. Preacherly in it's content, I could feel his bristle and his indignation as I read it. Reading is serious business and we'd better not EVER forget it.
Must admit here, that as I grow older, I do enjoy a book that makes me think for four times as long as the time it takes me to read it.
Now - on to the next book!
A rainy day and last day of my holidays so aimlessly began perusing my library shelves. A small tatty book, "Bibliophily or Booklove" is first to dip into: James F Willis was the author; published in 1921 in Boston and New York. It was originally priced at $1.00. The dust jacket, although browned with age and torn is still intact. The dedication is to S.R.C and C.A.L. Loyal and steadfast.
This small book has six chapters and only 83 pages. Within those, though, are some gems:
" The booklover is the richest and the happiest of men, however humble his station may be: it keeps him from vulgar company and pastimes, and is the most efficacious means for obtaining all the amenities of culture."
"they lunched with Plutarch and supped with Plato."
"They are not always what the world knows as practical, for spiritual development seldom produces dexterity in the baser organs."
"what food is to the body, books are to the soul"
"little men so often write just to say something; big men never write until they have something to say."
' the common books may afford enjoyment, if we are cheap enough to wish for anything as plebeian as mere enjoyment; but it is only the books called literature - the Great Books- that can enrich our life;: the books that inspire and enforce are far more needful than those that instruct and amuse - a man's book company is an index of his soul."
"they impel us to be and to become, to dare and to do."
" A mere collection of books is not a library - a bookshop is a collection of books. A library is an organism that develops with the soul of its owner;"
"Newspapers and magazines are mainly idle things for the idle hours of idle people; to read them properly is one of the supreme acts of presence-of-mind. They are mostly as soulless as the syndicates that publish them, and the chances are ten-to-one that that they shall waste our time or mislead us, or both." (Oh, Rupert Murdoch please read this.)
" It is only the intellectual loafer and the moral paralytic that lolls over the trash and the filth of cheap fiction: nwspapers and magazines have their place in the world: but light-reading has nothing for anybody but distraction, dissipation and debauchery. Debilitating waste of head and heart in aimless, promiscuous, vapid reading in the poisonous exhaltations of book-garbage - this is misuse of reading, the sin of it. So much of the shallow conceit and the opinionated infallibility which prevails today is attributable quite as much to inferior reading as to the smattering of the school-mills." (SCHOOL-MILLS!!!! Love it! Will use it.)
"The public libraries!! When eighty percent of the books they distribute is inferior fiction full of fribbles and oddities and monstrosities, a public library is anything but a public benefit!"
"almost all the public library patrons have weak book-stomachs able to digest nothing stonger than the inspid society novel, and nothing purer than the mud of newspapers and magazines."
__________________________________________________________________________________
Ah - I love the sanctimonious tone of this writer; I love his sharp criticisms and his obvious enjoyment of the use of aliteration. Preacherly in it's content, I could feel his bristle and his indignation as I read it. Reading is serious business and we'd better not EVER forget it.
Must admit here, that as I grow older, I do enjoy a book that makes me think for four times as long as the time it takes me to read it.
Now - on to the next book!
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