Harvard Removes Human Skin Cover From 19th-Century Book

Harvard University has taken off the cover made of human skin from a 19th-century book stored in its library.

The book “Des Destinées de l’Ame” (Destinies of the Soul) has been housed at Houghton Library since the 1930s. The library is Harvard University’s Primary Repository for rare books and manuscripts.

In 2014, scientists concluded that the covering material of the book was indeed human skin.

However, the university has recently disclosed that it has removed the binding “due to the ethically fraught nature of the book’s origins and subsequent history”.

“Des Destinées de l’Ame” is a meditation on the soul and the afterlife, authored by Arsène Houssaye in the mid-1880s.

He reportedly gifted it to his friend, Dr. Ludovic Bouland, a doctor, who purportedly bound the book using skin from the body of an unidentified deceased female patient who had passed away from natural causes.

Harvard University explained its decision to remove the binding, saying: “After careful study, stakeholder engagement, and consideration, Harvard Library and the Harvard Museum Collections Returns Committee concluded that the human remains used in the book’s binding no longer belong in the Harvard Library collections, due to the ethically fraught nature of the book’s origins and subsequent history.”

Furthermore, it mentioned it was exploring methods to ensure “the human remains will be given a respectful disposition that seeks to restore dignity to the woman whose skin was used”.

The university noted that the library is also “conducting additional biographical and provenance research into the anonymous female patient”.

Des Destinées de l’Ame arrived at Harvard University in 1934. Inside the book, a note penned by Dr. Bouland indicates that no ornament was stamped on the cover to “preserve its elegance”.

“I had kept this piece of human skin taken from the back of a woman,” he wrote. “A book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering.”
Ten years ago, Bill Lane, the director of the Harvard Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics Resource Laboratory, told the Houghton Library Blog that it was “very unlikely that the source could be other than human”.

Harvard acknowledged in its statement that its handling of the book had failed to meet the “ethical standards” of care and that in publicizing it, it had on occasion used a “sensationalistic, morbid and humorous tone” which was not appropriate.

The university apologized and recognized that its actions had “further objectified and compromised the dignity of the human being whose remains were used for its binding”.

The practice of binding books in human skin, known as anthropodermic bibliopegy, has been documented as early as the 16th century. Accounts from the 19th century describe instances where the skin of executed criminals was donated to science and later given to bookbinders.

Melissa Enoch