Book bound with dead woman's skin that has been in Harvard's library for 90 years is finally removed despite scientists confirming the cover was human ten years ago

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-13249385/harvard-book-binding-dead-woman-skin.html

>The Ivy League school first learned of the legitimacy of claims that the book, Destines of the Soul, was covered in actual human skin in 2014 in just the latest scandal faced by the institution

Harvard University finally removed a book that was bound with the skin of an unidentified woman who died in a French psychiatric hospital while acknowledging 'past failures in its stewardship.'

The Ivy League school first learned of the legitimacy of claims that the book, Des Destinées de l'Ame meaning Destines of the Soul, was covered in actual human skin in 2014 in just the latest scandal faced by the institution.

The book contains a note from its former owner Dr. Ludovic Bouland, who bound the book, in which he explains that he performed the bizarre act because 'a book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering.' The author, Arsène Houssaye, a friend of Bouland's, was not involved in the process. The book is described as a meditation on the soul and life after death

'Evidence indicates that Bouland bound the book with skin, taken from a woman, which he had acquired as a medical student,' Tom Hyry, associate Harvard librarian for archives and special collections, said this week.

'A memo accompanying the book written by John Stetson, which has since been lost, told us that Bouland took this skin from the body of an unknown deceased woman patient from a French psychiatric hospital,' he added. When Bouland died in 1933, the book was presented as a gift to Harvard by John B. Stetson, an American diplomat who was the heir to the Stetson hat empire. Stetson graduated from the Ivy League school in 1906.

Stetson knew about the skin and told Harvard about it during donation.

Since 1954, the book has been in open circulation in the school, meaning any member of the Houghton Library, could access it.

In a statement Harvard admitted that students were commonly hazed and tasked with taking the book out something that the school calls an example of its 'past failures in its stewardship of the book that further objectified and compromised the dignity of the human being.'

In that statement, the school apologized for this.

>An associate librarian of the Houghton Library, Anne-Marie Eze, said that removing the book was 'part of the University's larger project of addressing human remains in its collections.'