Harvard removes human skin binding from book because it was taken without consent

(TMX) -- Harvard University has removed human skin from the binding of a 19th-century text.

The university said the decision was made because the skin was taken without consent from a deceased woman.

Harvard Library announced this month that it had removed human skin from the binding of its 1880s copy of “Des destinées de l’âme” by Arsène Houssaye, which was held at the Houghton Library. The move is based on recommendations from the 2022 Report of the Harvard University Steering Committee on Human Remains in University Museum Collections.

“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,” the library said in a statement.

The book’s first owner, French physician Dr. Ludovic Bouland (1839–1933), created the binding with the skin of a deceased patient in the hospital where he worked while he was a medical student. The volume has been in the Harvard Library collection since 1934, on deposit from Harvard alumnus John B. Stetson, Jr. (1884–1952), an American diplomat and businessman.

“The book is a meditation on the soul and life after death,” Tom Hyry, Associate University Librarian for Archives and Special Collections, said in a Q&A published by the library on Wednesday. “A handwritten note by Bouland inserted into the volume states that ‘a book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering.’”

A lost memo that originally came with the book when it was donated, written by Stetson, indicated that Bouland took the skin from a deceased woman patient at a French psychiatric hospital.

An internal review into the library’s stewardship of the book revealed that although it was only publicly confirmed to be bound in human skin in 2014 — in a “sensationalistic, morbid” blog post — students of decades past were well aware.

“Library lore also 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,” said Anne-Marie Eze, Associate Librarian of Houghton Library.

The book has been digitized for continued public access, but the human skin is not available — physically or digitally — to any researchers, Eze said.

The skin is now in secure storage at Harvard Library, which is researching Bouland the book’s history and provenance, and the anonymous female patient whose skin was used in the binding. The library said university authorities are also coordinating with the appropriate authorities in France to “determine a final respectful disposition of these human remains.”

“We apologize on behalf of Harvard Library for past failures in our stewardship of the book that further objectified and compromised the dignity of the human being at the center,” Hyry said. “We are determined to move forward with care, sensitivity, and ethical responsibility and are committed to best practices in the field, including reflection and correcting historical errors.”

Copyright 2023 Gray Media Group, Inc. All rights reserved. TMX contributed to this report