A book bound in human skin has been stripped by Harvard University’s Houghton Library following a review prompted by the recommendations put forward in 2022 regarding human remains in museum collections. Harvard Library states the “ethically fraught nature” of the book’s origins and history made it inappropriate for stewardship at the library, and are in the process of determining a final respectful disposition of the human skin.
Anthropodermic bibliopegy is the name given to the process of binding books in human skin, and there are examples housed in museums across the globe. As you might expect for such grim artifacts, the portfolio is made up of strange origin stories, including several examples – such as the copy of An Authentic and Faithful History of the Mysterious Murder of Maria Marten pictured above – that are allegedly made from the skin of murderers.
The book bound in human skin at Houghton Library, home to Harvard’s rare books at manuscripts, was a copy of Arsène Houssaye’s book Des destinées de l’âme. It was owned by French physician and bibliophile Dr Ludovic Bouland (1839–1933), whose apparent love of books led to the problematic decision to bind his copy in human skin.
The skin came from the body of a deceased female patient whose remains were at the hospital where Bouland worked. He took it without consent, the patient’s identity not known, and the book has been in the collections of Harvard Library since 1934.
“A handwritten note by Bouland inserted into the volume states that ‘a book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering’,” said Tom Hyry, Associate University Librarian for Archives and Special Collections and Florence Fearrington Librarian of Houghton Library, in a Q&A with Harvard Library Communications.
“Evidence indicates that Bouland bound the book with skin, taken from a woman, which he had acquired as a medical student. A memo accompanying the book written by John Stetson, which has since been lost, told us that Bouland took this skin from the body of an unknown deceased woman patient from a French psychiatric hospital.”
Rights around human remains came to the fore in 2004 when the Human Tissue Act set firm guidelines as to the proof of consent required to display human remains like the Body Worlds exhibition. Then, in 2022, further regulations for human remains in museum collections were put forward by the Steering Committee Report.
“We must begin to confront the reality of a past in which academic curiosity and opportunity overwhelmed humanity,” said Lawrence Bacow, president of Harvard University, in the report.
The report triggered a review that exposed several ways in which the stewardship of the human-skin-bound book failed to meet ethical standards. This included the book’s role in an old hazing ritual in which students were dared to retrieve the book, not realizing what the binding was made of. When it was confirmed that the binding on the book was indeed human skin back in 2014, the Houghton Library also published several blog posts that they say “utilized a sensationalistic, morbid, and humorous tone.”
“Harvard Library acknowledges past failures in its stewardship of the book that further objectified and compromised the dignity of the human being whose remains were used for its binding,” they said in a statement. “We apologize to those adversely affected by these actions.”
There is a rich history of human remains being displayed in ethically dubious ways, from the exhibition hall of La Morgue in Paris in 1860, to Body Worlds in the modern era. As Bacow said, academia has had a significant part to play in the acquisition of human remains through unethical means, such as the 130-year-old dissection of the human nervous system, believed to have been taken from the body of Harriet Cole.
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