Harvard removes human skin from binding of 19th century book

Harvard University has removed the binding of human skin from a 19th Century book , Des Destinées de l'Ame (Destinies of the Soul), kept in its library since the 1930s.

In 2014, scientists determined that the material it was bound with was in fact human skin. 10 years later, the university has announced that it has removed the binding "due to the ethically fraught nature of the book's origins and subsequent history".

Des Destinées de l'Ame is a meditation on the soul and life after death, written by Arsène Houssaye in the mid-1880s.

The volume’s first owner, French physician and bibliophile Dr. Ludovic Bouland (1839–1933), was handed over the book by his friend Houssaye. Bouland bound the book with skin he took without consent from the body of a deceased female patient in a hospital where he worked as a medical student in the 1860s, the university said.

A handwritten note by Bouland inserted into the volume states that “a book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering.” The note also describes the process used to treat the skin so it could be used to bind the text.

The Houghton library is now in the process of conducting additional biographical and provenance research into the anonymous female patient, Bouland, and the book, it said.

It is also deliberating talks with appropriate authorities to determine a final respectful disposition of these human remains