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Harvard University removes the human skin cover from an 1800s book!

2024-03-29 09:11:46Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX

Harvard University removes the human skin cover from an 1800s book!

Harvard University says the first owner of a French novelist's book took the skin of a dead female patient without her consent, and said he will remove the leather cover from a 19th-century book, according to " The Guardian".

The book, called "Des Destinées de l'Ame" (" Destinies of the Soul "), has been held in the university's Houghton Library since the 1930s, but attracted international attention in 2014 when tests confirmed the cover was made of human skin.

The university said that "after careful study, engagement and consideration of stakeholders, we will remove the skin binding and work with the authorities to determine a final disposition respecting these human remains."

The book was written by Arsène Houssaye, a French novelist, in the mid-1880s as a meditation on the nature of having a soul and life after death.

The volume's first owner, the French physician Ludovic Bouland, then bound the book in human skin.

Harvard said Bouland took skin from a dead female patient at a hospital where he worked without her consent.

This troubling story, which Harvard called "fraught with ethics," led the university to decide to remove the leather bandage.

"As you can imagine, this has been an unusual circumstance for us at the library, and we've learned a lot in reaching our decision," Tom Hyry, an archivist at Houghton Library, said in a question and answer released by Harvard announcing decision to remove the book from his library.

In the past, Harvard students employed in the library's page collections were subjected to a murky ritual where they were asked to retrieve the book without being told it was covered in human remains.

Confirmation of the book's strange connection in 2014, at the time, was also handled more gently by Harvard.

The university called the discovery " good news for fans of anthropoderm bibliopegy, bibliomaniacs and cannibals alike ."

Anthropodermic bibliopegy is the practice of binding books to human skin, something that enjoyed a wave of popularity in the 19th century but has been around since at least the 1500s.


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