Des destinées de l'ame, a book about life after death and the human soul, is constructed with a cover made of human skin, researchers from Harvard University announced. This book was manufactured in France during the 19th Century, and is currently in the collection of the Harvard library system.
Arsene Houssaye, a French writer, wrote the work, which he reportedly passed to a friend, a doctor with an interest in books, during the middle part of the 1880's.
Ludovic Bouland, the physician, reportedly bound the book with the skin of a deceased female mental patient. He then wrote in the book that "A book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering." Harvard researchers concluded with a certainty of 99.9 percent that binding was in deed made from human skin.
The practice, although generally frowned upon in the modern world, was not that uncommon at the time the book was produced.
"Termed anthropodermic bibliopegy, the binding of books in human skin has occurred at least since the 16th century. The confessions of criminals were occasionally bound in the skin of the convicted, or an individual might request to be memorialized for family or lovers in the form of a book," Harvard reseachers said.
Arsène Houssaye was a French novelist, who was born near Laon, France in 1815. By 1832, the young man arrived in Paris, and began writing. Four years later, he published two novels, La Couronne de bluets and La Pécheresse. He died in the French capital city in 1896.
Strangely, this may not be the only book in the Harvard University collection that could be bound with human flesh. A copy of the work Metamorphoses, written by Ovid in 1597, could also have a similar binding, created by human skin.
Harvard Law School has a third book which was once believed to have an anthropodermic book in their collection, but that journal has since proven to be manufactured from sheepskin.
This copy of Des destinees de l'ame was brought to the library, for deposit, by a book collector in 1934. The widow of that donor passed it on to the university permanently twenty years later.
Tiny samples were taken from the books, and proteins were examined to reveal the source of the binding materials.
"The analytical data, taken together with the provenance of Des destinées de l'ame, make it very unlikely that the source could be other than human," Bill Lane, director of the Harvard Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics Resource Laboratory, said.
Further tests will be conducted to make sure the binding of this oddly-covered work by Houssaye is not the product of a close relative of humans, such as a great ape or gibbon.
