![]() ![]() They collected microscopic samples from the book's cover and sent them through a peptide mass fingerprint analysis, which looks at the protein in the samples to identify the origin. Harvard researchers didn't just take Bouland's word for it. #HARVARD UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOOKS BOUND IN HUMAN SKIN SKIN#A book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering: I had kept this piece of human skin taken from the back of a woman." That woman was an unnamed mental patient who died from a stroke. ![]() The tests, taking microscopic samples from various parts of the binding, allowed analysts to identify the source of the material through its proteins. By looking carefully you easily distinguish the pores of the skin. 'Houghton's book is now the only known book at Harvard bound in human skin,' said the library, the college's main repository for rare books and manuscripts. The message includes this passage: "This book is bound in human skin parchment on which no ornament has been stamped to preserve its elegance. baaaaaad news for fans of anthropodermic bibliopegy (binding books in human skin): recent analyses of a book owned by the harvard law school library, long believed but never proven to have been. The particular copy that sits in Harvard's Houghten Library came with a note written by Ludovic Bouland, a medical doctor, after receiving a copy from author Arsène Houssaye in the late 1800s. It's a book described as a meditation on the soul and life after death. ![]()
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