Harvard Libraries announced Wednesday that it has removed human skin from the binding of a book in its collection. Evidence suggests that one of the former owners of the work took this skin from a woman’s corpse while he was a medical student.
The book has been in the University’s collection since 1934. The library of the American University of Harvard in Massachusetts announced this Wednesday, March 27, that it had “removed human skin from the binding of a copy of a book by Arsene Hauss, The destiny of the soul (1880), held in the Houghton Library.
The university confirmed in 2014, thanks to a scientific test, that human skin was present on the binding of the book. According to a Harvard Library press release, the book’s author, Frenchman Arsene Houssay, gave the copy to a friend of his, Dr. Ludovic Bowland, in the early 1880s. Then the work was done by the American diplomat, John B. Sent to Harvard by Stetson.
Skin taken from the corpse of a woman
Ludovic Bowland slipped a handwritten note into this copy stating that “a book on the human soul deserves to be covered with a human cover”. “The note also describes the process used to treat the leather so that it could be used to bind the text,” says the library.
Harvard has not been able to determine who owned the used skin, but “evidence” suggests that it was taken from a woman’s corpse by Ludovic Bowland while he was a medical student.
Restricted entry in 2015
The library restricted access to the book in 2015 and instituted a moratorium on any new research-related requests in February 2023. It also created a committee dedicated to analyzing the book and its history, confirming “the reasonable certainty that Buland took and used the skin without the consent of the woman concerned”, she explains on her site.
“Based on this review, the Harvard Library and Harvard Museums Collection Restitution Committee has concluded that due to the ethically sensitive nature of the book’s provenance and history, the human remains used in the binding of House’s book no longer belong in the collection of the Harvard Library,” the library official added.
Library “Identifies Defects”
In its press release, the library “acknowledges past failures in its management of the book, which used human remains for its binding and has further offended and compromised its dignity” and apologized “to those harmed by these actions.”
The book will remain in the Houghton Library collection and can once again be consulted by researchers, but without its cover. Now the removed skin will remain at Harvard until its origins are clarified.
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