As if it doesn’t have enough to worry about, Harvard University announced yesterday that its copy of Arsène Houssaye’s “Des Destinées de L’Ame,” or “The Destiny of Souls” had been stripped of the very feature that made it unusual enough to be worth collecting. The book (above) had been bound in human skin, just like the book in “The Evil Dead” movies. Its first owner, Dr. Ludovic Bouland, a French doctor, had inserted in the volume a handwritten note saying that “a book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering.” The alumnus who gave the book to Harvard in 1934, the American diplomat (and the famous hat family heir) John B. Stetson, had informed the Houghton Library (Harvard’s rare book collection), that Bouland had taken the skin from an unknown woman who died in a French psychiatric hospital.
Harvard removed the binding and said it would be exploring options for “a final respectful disposition of these human remains.” “After careful study, stakeholder engagement, and consideration, Harvard Library and the Harvard Museum Collections Returns Committee concluded that the human remains used in the book’s binding no longer belong in the Harvard Library collections, due to the ethically fraught nature of the book’s origins and subsequent history,” the university’s statement read.
Incidentally, the word for binding books in human skin is anthropodermic bibliopegy.
Your Ethics Alarms Ethics Quiz of the Day is…
Was this really ethically necessary?
Harvard then began groveling apologies, confessing that its own handling of the copy of “Des Destinées de L’Ame” hadn’t lived up to “ethical standards” of care, and that the strange book had sometimes been publicized using an inappropriate “sensationalistic, morbid and humorous tone.” The Houghton library apologized profusely for “further objectif[ying] and compromis[ing] the dignity of the human being whose remains were used for its binding.”
My reaction, admitting that in my current state of mind if Harvard goes North I will tend to go South, is that this is virtue signaling and phony woke grandstanding. It’s just skin. Its owner didn’t miss it. The book is an artifact of history, and a time and culture when doing weird things like binding a book in human skin was considered weird but acceptable. Having the book in its original condition makes it educational: taking away the book’s most interesting feature essentially destroys it.
The skin’s owner is unknown, and nobody knows where, if anywhere, she was buried: what is Harvard going to do to achieve a “respectful disposition” of the binding, hold a funeral for the skin? This poor woman who died in a mad house had one tiny bit of immortality and fame, and Harvard is taking that away from her in the interests of showing oodles of sensitivity.
Blecchh.
Oddly, the same university that is so remorseful over its handling of the century-old skin of an unknown, long dead mental patient is overwhelmingly populated by good progressives who see nothing wrong with killing living human beings in the womb and tossing what’s left of them in a medical waste bin.
Ethics Alarms 
Personally, I think there’s nothing wrong with showcasing the book, just like there’s nothing wrong with a torture museum filled with items that should never be used in the modern day.
Harvard destroyed a cultural artifact. What is preventing them from destroying other artifacts in their possession, due to the ethically fraught nature of the item’s origins and subsequent history? I wouldn’t trust Harvard with taking proper care of anything in their possession.
There are a number of books with cadaver leather coverings so this is obviously a virtue signaling exercise. Apparently the French did this quite often for macabre times.
I believe Cambridge or Oxford keep the head of Jeremy Bentham and bring him out on special occasions. That was a favorite of we Economics majors. I hope they don’t cancel that practice.
Not just the head! ALL of him. He was stuffed, had a wax head put on his mummy, and seated at his desk at his University of London office until it was destroyed in the blitz. He “survived,” though, and the glass case holding him has to be at every meeting of the schools board of overseers or they lose Jeremy’s vast book collection.
When Grace and I went to London, I asked to see Jeremy, but was told he was “on holiday.”
I sent you a link on that. I was told it was just the head in college but apparently the body was stuffed too. Not sure why they decapitated him if the head was the part brought out for events. Now they simply bring out what appears to be a stuffed suit with a fake head. What’s the point if you can’t get people traumatized😝
Oh, I have a picture, I think. It shows the mummified, scary-looking head—like the Crypt-Keeper— sitting in the corner of his box. Current pictures don’t show his head. Note how in the more recent photo, Jeremy’s wearing gloves—that because his hands are brown and shriveled.
I was thinking of what it would look like to do something like this in the current year, and it’s not particularly hard: There are examples, almost all of them falling into two categories: Educational, like the bodies exhibit, or Artistic, like that exhibit we talked about a few years back… My memory escapes me, but I think it had something to do with a body that had been donated to science ending up in a display about alcoholism?
But even in that example, some base amount of consent was obtained… We generally treat death with a base amount of respect, and endeavor to abide by last wishes.
This… Probably isn’t an example of that. We generally wouldn’t skin a corpse to bind a book absent some really odd request and a whole lot of legal hoop jumping. I probably couldn’t get this done with my skin if I wanted to.
I wonder if this is a fallacy as I write it… But it’s not like you can unskin the woman and bury her dermis with her body. It feels like a fallacy because I’m handwaving over some gnarly behavior, but it has the benefit of being true: Nothing anyone does now will give anyone closure. I think you have to separate the actions, and it ought to be made easier by the span of time between them: Originally, someone stole someone’s skin to bind a book. Now: You’re destroying a book, because the binding was sourced unethically.
And that feels like a standard they wouldn’t use anywhere else. How many museums are overly concerned with how their products were sourced? We’re hearing about countries trying to repatriate items taken during the colonial period, but that’s only because there’s someone with some amount of standing to make the claim. How many bits of animals hunted to extinction for their parts are on display? How many straight up stolen relics are on display with no living claimants to speak up?
How much of history are we willing to crate up and burn because someone who died before anyone currently alive was born did something unethical?
excellent perspective HT
In the linked article, the thing goes off on the new regulation regarding exhibiting Nave American and other bodies, mummies and religious/sacred artifacts. I don’t think the situations are analogous with the book.
And now I realize this post needs the “ick vs. ethics” tag.
Related Q: Does anyone actually use the tags? They are unbelievably time-consuming to set up. (I use the tags constantly.)
I occasionally use the tags when you haven’t already linked to the blog’s history on a specific subject and I want a recap, but other than that I just read the posts as they come.
If we find ourselves party to a fait accompli and it does no extra harm undoing the act then you should aim to undo the act.
If it does greater harm to undo the act then you don’t.
Seems like burying skin adds no harm and reinforces the value of respecting the dead that society should protect.
I think it’s fair to say that the woman in question has been sufficiently disrespected by having her skin used as a book binding that nothing done now remedies the situation.
Other than stopping the use of her skin this way. That can be done. It stops adding to the year in year out abuse of this particular mentally ill woman.
And therefore reinforces to the living that we find the thought of doing the same to them abhorrent.
De minimis non curat lex. At this point, I don’t see the harm.
lex de minimis non curat sed ethica debet
!!!!!!!
If the artifact bothered the ick factor sensibilities of the Harvard curators, there are plenty of other places that would gladly take it off their hands. The Mütter museum comes to mind.
Destruction of the book seems akin to destroying antique ivory. Sure, destroying antiques might make sense to discourage new ivory entering the market, but there are counterproductive effects of increasing scarcity and thus value and decreasing market participants’ respect and willingness to adhere to the very law supposedly protecting living animals. If you have to enter the underground market to sell your antique pocketknife with ivory scales, why not be tempted by that fancy new one…
There are plenty of human remains in numerous anatomic and medical science museums.
Will those go also?
A few years ago there was a wandering show of the anatomic man that was popular all over the world. Was that unethical?
What about all of those Vicotorian death masks and figurines with human hair?
And lastly, the shrunken heads imported from africa tha werre all the reag ein the 60-70’s.
Just some analagous observations that came mind.
In my experience, having read all 7 volumes of the Harry Potter series, an artifact like a book about the human soul that has actual human skin as its cover more than likely has a curse attached to it. This is particularly true when the artifact in question becomes a plot point, as this one has. Given Harvard’s recent series of missteps and apparently self-inflicted wounds, I’d say a curse is far and away the most probable explanation. This book could be the cause of Harvard’s troubles.
Harvard needs to get rid of the book. Half-assed measures like removing the cover are unlikely to work, and may in fact only make matters worse. Any fool knows the only way to remove the curse is to find some other victim that can be convinced to willingly take the item and thus have the curse pass on to them. Maybe Harvard could try donating the book to one of Yale’s libraries.
Ethics Quiz Verdict: Ethics be damned! They need to get this book out of there at any cost!
One other thought. Getting rid of the book may not be sufficient to rid Harvard of all the negative effects it has wrought. They need to do something pro-active to improve the situation. They might consider throwing a virgin student into the Tanner Fountain, if they can find one.
Edit: This is Harvard we’re talking about, not USC. They’re probably all virgins.
^^^ +1
That is a deliciously creepy response. I love it.
jvb
How we treat remains is for the living not the dead. If the woman didn’t consent for her remains to be used this way and her remains were used this way, then we tell the living that when their time comes we don’t care about their final wishes or their memory and we’ll do what we please with them.
Bury the skin.
If the woman consented then Harvard is errant here.