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1. Harvard university library books bound in human skin skin#
2. Harvard university library books bound in human skin series#

Harvard university library books bound in human skin series#

That story is not for the weak-stomached, but Rosenbloom tackles it with curiosity and empathy in a series of essays that take readers behind the scenes of the oldest museums and libraries in the world. Rosenbloom, who has a background in journalism, effortlessly combines perspectives from history, science, and the rare book world to tell her story. Readers who relish the “dark academia” vibes of Donna Tartt’s The Secret History or the historical medical accuracy of The Knick will love spending time in Rosenbloom’s company, though the book holds broader appeal as well. The results of her efforts are compiled in Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin. Megan Rosenbloom has spent the last six years pursuing answers to those questions.

Harvard university library books bound in human skin skin#

Whose skin was this? What kind of person would bind a book in human skin? And why? Holding the book didn’t give me goosebumps, but it did raise many questions. (Human: anthropos skin: derma book: biblion fasten: pegia.) At my first opportunity, I stole away on a break to get a look at the volume. Not long after I arrived, Harvard announced that the 19th-century philosophical treatise I held in my hands was the first proven example using peptide mass fingerprinting of anthropodermic bibliopegy, the practice of binding books in human skin. As a graduate student, I had been hired to truck material between the underground stacks and the reading room, where researchers came from all over the world to pore over the library’s collections. I was holding Des Destinées de l’âme ( Destiny of the Soul) by philosopher Arsène Houssaye and standing in the bowels of Houghton Library, Harvard’s rare book and manuscript repository. The book looked unremarkable its pale-yellow binding blended in with its antiquarian neighbors on the shelf. He used that patient’s skin to bind three of the volumes.WHEN I FIRST held a book bound in human skin, the little hairs on my neck did not stand up, and chills did not run down my spine. John Stockton Hough, known for diagnosing the city’s first case of trichinosis. The College of Physicians of Philadelphia has four bound by Dr. Many of the volumes bound in human skin are medical books. “People kept their family histories written in Bibles, and what is a Quran?” she said. Pam Eyerdam, head of the library’s fine arts and special collections department, said he may have wanted to immortalize himself. The Cleveland Public Library has a Quran that may have been bound in the skin of its previous owner, an Arab tribal leader.

Walton was a highwayman - a robber who specialized in ambushing travelers - and he left the volume to one of his victims, John Fenno. The Boston Athenaeum, a private library, has an 1837 copy of George Walton’s memoirs bound in his own skin. “If you had called me and said these are books from Nazi Germany, I would have a very different response.” “There is a certain distancing that history gives us from certain kinds of artifacts,” Wolpe said, noting that museums often have bones from archaeological sites.