Surgeon's Hall

There was an opportunity for a tour of the Library at The Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh to see their rare and old books. Hard to pick one from the pictures I took; they have Arthur Conan Doyle's notebook and 'Sherlock Holmes' (modelled after Joseph Bell)'s chair. There's a fabulous elephant folio of "Planches anatomiques du corps humain exécutées d'après les dimensions naturelles, accompagnees d'un texte explicative" by Antommarchi, François Carlo (1780-1838) Paris, 1826. Blip is of the Nuremberg Chronicle, published in 1493. Explanatory text below. 

Walked up the bridges to get to the Hall; cold and blustery in the West wind, with a few drips in the air. Had the wind at my back on the return which felt a few degrees warmer. 

Cabinet maker in later on to survey for making bookshelves. 

Liber Chronicarum [Nuremberg Chronicle]
Schedel, Hartman (1440-1514)
Nuremberg, 1493
This book is probably the most extensively illustrated book of the 15th Century. It was meant to serve as an account of the whole of human history, from Biblical genesis to the date of publication. This first edition is considered to be one of the finest examples of early European printing, published only 40 years after the Gutenberg Bible in Mainz, the first printed work in Europe.
It's author, Hartman Schedel, was a medical doctor and book collector. He was commissioned in around 1490 by two Nuremberg merchants, Sebald Schreyer and Sebastian Kammermeister, to write this text, in which he compiled Biblical, philosophical theory, ancient history and humanist observations.
Schedel secured the services of Nuremberg's most celebrated artist, Michael Wolmegut, to create the woodcuts needed to illustrate the work, and it is likely that Albrecht Durer, later a great figure of Renaissance art in Germany, participated in their creation as he was apprenticed to Wolmegut during this time. The 1,809 images in the book cover a diverse array of topics. Included are lineages of Kings and royal lines; Popes; scenes from the Bible; scientific diagrams; and cityscapes from across Europe at the time of publication.
Sadly, the book's extensive geographical elements were rendered out of date almost immediately, following Christopher Columbus' return from the New World in 1493.
This copy was bequeathed to the Library from the estate of Robert Kirk FRCSEd in 1920.