#HARVARD UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOOKS BOUND IN HUMAN SKIN SKIN#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. Indeed, it would seem that the process wasn't shocking at the time of the book's inscription by its original owner, Dr. The confessions of criminals were occasionally bound in the skin of the convicted, or an individual might request to be memorialized for family or lovers in the form of a book. the binding of books in human skin has occurred at least since the 16th century. Which is how scientists proved that Des destinées de l’ame was, without a doubt, given the Leatherface treatment during binding.Īccording to a blog post by one scientist involved in the investigation, anthropodermic bibliopegy, the binding of books in human skin, used to be a more common occurrence: It's a bit complicated, but think of it like this: when proteins are slivered down to very small pieces, they are easily distinguished from each other when compared against samples in a database. The book, author Arsène Houssaye’s Des destinées de l’ame (which Google translates to The Destiny of the Soul), was tested by a process known as peptide mass fingerprinting. After an investigation into three Harvard library books potentially bound in human skin, it turns out that one, in fact, features a fleshy cover.
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