Harvard Removes Human Skin Binding From Book In Its Collections (Whoa!) [View all]

https://www.newyorkalmanack.com/2024/03/harvard-human-skin-binding-book/


"Harvard Library has removed human skin from the binding of an 1880s edition of Arsène Houssaye’s book Des destinées de l’âme (The Destinies of the Soul, 1879), held at Houghton Library. The volume’s first owner, French physician and bibliophile Dr. Ludovic Bouland (1839–1933), bound the book with skin he took without consent from the back of an unclaimed deceased woman in a French psychiatric hospital where he worked."