Numerous 19th Century accounts exist of the bodies of executed criminals being donated to science, their skins later given to bookbinders. The practice of binding books in human skin - termed anthropodermic bibliopegy - has been reported since as early as the 16th Century. "The analytical data, taken together with the provenance of Des destinees de l'ame, make it very unlikely that the source could be other than human," Bill Lane, the director of the Harvard Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics Resource Laboratory, told the Houghton Library Blog. Writer Arsene Houssaye is said to have given the book to his friend, Dr Ludovic Bouland, in the mid-1880s.ĭr Bouland then reportedly bound the book with skin from the body of an unclaimed female patient who had died of natural causes. She'd died from a stroke and nobody had claimed her body.A book owned by Harvard University has been bound in human skin, scientists believe.ĭes destinees de l'ame (Destinies of the Soul) has been housed at Houghton Library since the 1930s. The skin on Harvard's book came from the back of a female mental patient. Some might have come from the remains of bodies donated (or taken) for science. You might be wondering where all this skin came from. It became something of a trend beginning in the late 16th and early 17th centuries and several examples remain in libraries around the world. The book is the only such volume in Harvard's collection, although the practice of binding books in human skin, known as anthropodermic bibliopegy, has a long history dating to the 13th century. Harvard didn't confirm that the skin actually came from a person until yesterday, after conservators and scientists analyzed proteins and amino acids in samples of the binding.īill Lane, who directs the Harvard Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics Resource Laboratory, concluded, "The analytical data, taken together with the provenance of 'Des destinées de l’ame,' make it very unlikely that the source could be other than human." deposited the book at Houghton Library in 1934 and his widow gifted it to the library in 1954. Pinaeus de Virginitatis notis which is also bound in human skin but tanned with sumac."Ī book collector named John B. Compare for example with the small volume I have in my library, Sever. It is interesting to see the different aspects that change this skin according to the method of preparation to which it is subjected. A book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering: I had kept this piece of human skin taken from the back of a woman. By looking carefully you easily distinguish the pores of the skin. "This book is bound in human skin parchment on which no ornament has been stamped to preserve its elegance. Ludovic Bouland, who inserted in the volume a note that explained its binding: Houssaye gave the book to his friend, the evil-sounding Dr. Harvard has long suspected that its copy of "Des destinées de l’ame," a work published in the 1880s by French writer Arsène Houssaye, was wrapped in the remnants of a flayed person. There's grizzly and fascinating news coming out of Harvard University.Ĭurators at the school's Houghton Library have confirmed that a book in the collection is bound in human skin.
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