Human Skin-Bound Books in Many Libraries

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alicia-w
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Human Skin-Bound Books in Many Libraries

#1 Postby alicia-w » Tue Jan 10, 2006 2:59 pm

No pun intended, but this just made my skin crawl....


PROVIDENCE, R.I. Jan 10, 2006 — Brown University's library boasts an anatomy book that combines form and function in macabre fashion. Its cover tanned and polished to a smooth golden brown, like fine leather is made of human skin.

In fact, a number of the nation's finest libraries, including Harvard's, have such books in their collections. The practice of binding books in human skin was not uncommon in centuries past, even if it was not always discussed in polite society.

At the time, the best libraries belonged to private collectors. Some were doctors who had access to skin from amputated parts and patients whose bodies had gone unclaimed. In other cases, wealthy bibliophiles acquired skin from executed criminals, medical school cadavers and people who died in the poor house.
In most cases, universities and other libraries acquired the books as donations or as part of collections they purchased.

It is not clear whether some of the patients knew what would happen to their bodies. In most cases, the skin appears to have come from poor people who had no one to claim their remains. In any case, the practice took place well before the modern age of consent forms and organ donor cards.

While human leather may be repulsive to contemporary society, libraries can ethically have the books in their collections if they are used respectfully for academic research and not displayed as objects of curiosity, said Paul Wolpe of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.

"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. "If you had called me and said these are books from Nazi Germany, I would have a very different response."

The Boston Athenaeum, a private library, has an 1837 copy of George Walton's memoirs bound in his own skin. Walton was a highwayman a robber who specialized in ambushing travelers and left the volume to one of his victims.

The Cleveland Public Library has a Quran that may have been bound in the skin of its previous owner, an Arab tribal leader.

Decades ago, the Harvard Law School Library bought a 1605 manual for Spanish lawyers for $42.50 from an antiquarian books dealer in New Orleans. It sat on a shelf unnoticed until the early 1990s, when curator David Ferris was going through the library catalog and found a note saying it was bound in a man's skin.

DNA tests as to whether it is human skin were inconclusive the genetic material having been destroyed by the tanning process but the library had a box made to store the book and now keeps it on a special shelf.

"We felt we couldn't set it just next to someone else's law books," Ferris said.

Nowadays, libraries typically keep such volumes in their rare book collections and do not allow them to circulate. But scholars can examine them.

Brown's John Hay Library has three books bound in human skin the 1568 anatomy text by the Belgian surgeon Andreas Vesalius, and two 19th-century editions of "The Dance of Death," a medieval morality tale.

One copy of "The Dance of Death" was rebound in 1893 by Joseph Zaehnsdorf, a master binder in London. A note to his client reports that he did not have enough skin and had to split it. The front cover, bound in the outer layer of skin, has a slightly bumpy texture, like soft sandpaper. The spine and back cover, made from the inner layer, feel like suede.

"The Dance of Death" is about how death prevails over all, rich or poor. As with many other skin-bound volumes, "there was some tie-in with the content of the book," said Sam Streit, director of the John Hay Library.

Similarly, many of the volumes are medical books. The College of Physicians of Philadelphia has some books bound by Dr. John Stockton Hough, who diagnosed the city's first case of trichinosis. He used that patient's skin to bind three of the volumes.

"The hypothesis that I was suggesting is that these physicians did this to honor the people who furthered medical research," said Laura Hartman, a rare-book cataloger at the National Library of Medicine in Maryland and author of a paper on the subject.


http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=1490994&page=1
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#2 Postby arkess7 » Tue Jan 10, 2006 3:18 pm

eeeewwwwwwwwwww!!!!!
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#3 Postby vbhoutex » Tue Jan 10, 2006 3:27 pm

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:18: :18: :18: :18:
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#4 Postby DaylilyDawn » Tue Jan 10, 2006 3:36 pm

MAJOR EEEEEEEEWWWWW! :18:
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#5 Postby O Town » Tue Jan 10, 2006 4:56 pm

Interesting. Not too ewwwww to me, no worse than the hide of other animals. But now if it was someone I knew I think it would be kinda gross. Definitley wierd.
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#6 Postby TexasStooge » Tue Jan 10, 2006 5:02 pm

Welcome to BARFSVILLE, U.S.A. :18:
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#7 Postby arkess7 » Tue Jan 10, 2006 5:39 pm

:fools: :roflmao: :roflmao: :uarrow: :uarrow: :uarrow:
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#8 Postby Terrell » Tue Jan 10, 2006 5:52 pm

I think it's pretty gross, though I do wonder if this is serious or a joke.
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#9 Postby Brent » Tue Jan 10, 2006 7:19 pm

:18: :18: :18:

I hope that's not serious.

Pretty please.

:P
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#10 Postby O Town » Tue Jan 10, 2006 7:24 pm

The link says abc news so I would say it's true. I guess I must be wierd for not thinking this is that gross. It is wierd and all but it's not like there is still anything human still attached to it, it looks like leather. No different that a mummy that has been preserved, I would say. Seems as though some of covers were made from people who requested it. Kinda odd and not my thing, but I believe it.
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#11 Postby Skywatch_NC » Tue Jan 10, 2006 8:25 pm

A different trend for sure...instead of leaving your body to science...leave your derma to a dictionary for ie. :wink: :lol:

Eric
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#12 Postby coriolis » Tue Jan 10, 2006 9:08 pm

I think that I've heard of that before.

I don't know what's so eeewwww, we're all natural and bio-degradable too.

As they say at Catholic burials: "Remember man that you are dust and unto dust you shall return." Unless of course they make a book out of you.
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#13 Postby arkess7 » Tue Jan 10, 2006 9:41 pm

geez...........WHATEVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :uarrow: :uarrow: :uarrow: :uarrow: :uarrow: SORRY STILL UGGGGG!!

:think: :18: :Chit:
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#14 Postby GalvestonDuck » Tue Jan 10, 2006 10:31 pm

Reminds me of "It rubs the lotion on its skin or else it gets the hose again" (Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs).

Ick!
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#15 Postby Dr. Jonah Rainwater » Tue Jan 10, 2006 11:10 pm

Rich people were wierd back then. (not now of course) They probably considered human-skin book binding to be fashionable because it was so hard to obtain, like eating snails or truffles just because of their price tag. I might think twice before sitting on an old leather chair now...
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#16 Postby LAwxrgal » Wed Jan 11, 2006 8:52 am

No matter, I still find the notion incredibly creepy.

Ewwwwwwwwww!
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#17 Postby angelwing » Wed Jan 11, 2006 9:06 am

For a minute I thought this was something from WW2 (well known that the Nazis used human skin as lamp shades, book covers, etc)but either way it's still EEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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#18 Postby HurricaneGirl » Wed Jan 11, 2006 12:36 pm

:eek: Holy Crap!! :eek:
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#19 Postby furluvcats » Wed Jan 11, 2006 5:46 pm

Bizarre, yet totally believable...when I die, PLEASE do NOT make me into a book...PLEASE!
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#20 Postby coriolis » Wed Jan 11, 2006 6:48 pm

I can think of worse things to be made into: A baseball, or a shoe sole for instance.
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