The methods used to test the book binding included a protein-identifying technique called peptide mass fingerprinting (PMF) and liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry to analyze amino acid order. According to the New York Times, both the other editions were found to be sourced from comparatively more pedestrian sheepskin in April. “A book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering.” He didn’t mark the cover with a title or author, because he wanted to “preserve its elegance”.Įven more shocking, the Harvard library alone had two other candidates for the dubious distinction of being a rare example of anthropodermic bibliopegy, or books bound in human flesh.
#Harvard university library books bound in human skin skin#
What could have inspired Bouland to do such a thing? “I had kept this piece of human skin taken from the back of a woman,” he wrote on an inscription inside the tome.
Bouland embellished the book with a special binding, made from skin taken from the body of an unclaimed female mental patient-and even though she died of natural causes, it’s still quite disturbing. Allegedly the author, Arsène Houssaye, gave the book to his friend, Ludovic Bouland, in the mid-1880s.
The book was donated to the school in 1934. Scientists have confirmed that a copy of Des destinees de l’ame (Destinies of the Soul) owned by Harvard University’s Houghton Library is, as has long been rumored, bound in human skin, reports the BBC.
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