Harvard University said it has removed human skin from the binding of a 19th-century book about the afterlife that has been in its collections since the 1930s. The decision came after a review found ethical concerns with the book’s origin and history.
The book, Des Destinees de L’ame, meaning “Destinies of the Soul,” was written by Arsene Houssaye, a French novelist and poet, in the early 1880s.
The printed text was given to a physician, Ludovic Bouland, who ”bound the book with skin he took without consent from the body of a deceased female patient in a hospital where he worked,” Harvard said in a recent statement.
Photo: AP
The book has been kept at the university’s Houghton Library.
Bouland included a handwritten note inside the book.
It said “a book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering,” university associate librarian Thomas Hyry on Wednesday said in a published question-and-answer segment online.
The note also detailed the process behind preparing the skin for binding.
Scientific analysis done in 2014 confirmed that the binding was made of human skin, the university said.
In its statement, Harvard said the library noted several ways in which its stewardship practices failed to meet its ethical standards.
“Until relatively recently, the library has made the book available to anyone who asked for it, regardless of their reason for wishing to consult it,” Harvard said. “Library lore suggests that decades ago, students employed to page collections in Houghton’s stacks were hazed by being asked to retrieve the book without being told it included human remains.”
When the testing confirmed the book was bound by human skin, “the library published posts on the Houghton blog that utilized a sensationalistic, morbid and humorous tone that fueled similar international media coverage,” the university said.
The removed skin is now in “secure storage at Harvard Library,” Houghton Library associate librarian Anne-Marie Eze said in the question-and-answer session.
The library said it would be conducting additional research into the book, Bouland and the anonymous female patient, and is also working with French authorities to determine a “final respectful disposition.”
Harvard said the skin removal was prompted by a library review following a Harvard University report on human remains in its museum collections, released in 2022.
“Harvard Library and the Harvard Museum Collections Returns Committee concluded that the human remains used in the book’s binding no longer belong in the Harvard Library collections, due to the ethically fraught nature of the book’s origins and subsequent history,” Harvard’s statement said.
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