Harvard University has removed human skin from the binding of a copy of Arsène Houssaye's book Desstinées de l'âme (The destinies of the soul, 1880), preserved in one of its libraries. The volume's first owner, the French doctor and bibliophile Ludovic Bouland (1839-1933), bound the book with leather that he took without consent from the body of a deceased patient at the hospital where she worked. A handwritten note by Bouland inserted in the volume states that “a book about the human soul deserved to have a human cover.” Despite that note, which also detailed the process of preparing the leather for binding, the alarms did not go off and the volume remained for decades in the University Library. It was even used to haz students. Now, Harvard is apologizing.
“The Harvard Library recognizes the failures committed in the past in book management, which further reified and compromised the dignity of the human being whose remains were used for its binding. We apologize to those harmed by these actions,” he said in a statement.
The book is a meditation on the soul and life after death, and Dr. Bouland, a French doctor and bibliophile, bound the book in human skin. The book has been part of the Harvard Library collections since 1934, initially deposited by John Stetson (1884-1952), American diplomat, businessman and Harvard alumnus, and later donated by his widow Ruby F. Stetson to the Houghton Library in 1954. In a note accompanying the book, written by John Stetson and which has been lost, Bouland was said to have taken the binding skin from the body of an unknown patient at a French psychiatric hospital.
Removal of human skin Desstinées de l'âme comes after Houghton Library reviewed the book's custody, following recommendations from the Report of the Harvard University Steering Committee on Human Remains in University Museum Collections published in autumn 2022. Although the report focused predominantly on the human remains of slaves and Native Americans preserved at the University, the committee mentioned the book in its report. The Houghton Library, where the copy was, is Harvard University's main repository of rare books and manuscripts.
In the course of its review, the library noted several ways in which its custodian practices fell short of ethical standards. Until relatively recently, the library made the book available to anyone who requested it, regardless of the reason they wanted to consult it. The library's history suggests that decades ago, students employed to browse the collections on Houghton's shelves were subjected to hazing by being asked to check out the book without being told it included human remains.
Furthermore, in 2014, after scientific analysis confirmed that the book was bound with human skin, the library published articles on Houghton's blog “in a sensational, morbid and humorous tone that sparked similar international media coverage,” focusing on the morbid nature of the object, rather than the person whose skin was used without consent or its moral implications, Harvard admits.
After studying the situation, the Harvard Library and the Harvard Museum Collections Returns Committee concluded that the human remains used to bind the book should not be in the University's collections for ethical reasons, including non-consensual origin. of its use as well as the subsequent history. The Library is carrying out additional research on the provenance and biography of the book, on Bouland and on the anonymous patient, and consulting with the competent authorities of the University and France “to determine a respectful final disposition of these human remains,” indicates.
The book, without the binding, has been completely digitized and the scanned images are available to the public, including Dr. Bouland's handwritten note stating that it “deserved a human covering.” The human skin used to bind the book is not available, either in person or digitally, to any researcher, but is located in “a secure warehouse at the Harvard Library,” says Anne-Marie Eze, associate librarian at the Library. Houghton, in a publication released by the University.
“We began imposing restrictions on access in 2015 and instituted a complete moratorium on access for new researchers in February 2023,” explains Eze. “We have removed all images of the skin from the catalog (…), from online blog posts and from other channels. The bound book will remain in the Houghton Library collection and will again be available to researchers, but without its cover,” he adds.
American museums and universities are reviewing their collections to comply with the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). It is a law passed by Congress in 1990 that requires museums and federally funded institutions to return human remains, funerary objects, sacred objects, and cultural heritage objects of Native Americans that have been unjustly taken from their descendants. directly, to Indian tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations. Regulatory gaps and lack of deadlines caused the process to stall in many cases, but the Department of the Interior last year he promoted a new regulation, which came into force on January 12, for a more agile and consistent application.
In January 2021, in a message to the university community, then-Harvard Chancellor Lawrence Bacow drew attention to the presence of the remains of 15 probably enslaved Africans along with more than 22,000 other human remains of different types in the collections. of Harvard museums, primarily the Peabody Museum of Archeology and Ethnology and the Warren Anatomical Museum. The study published in 2022, who classified those remains. Three lines of that report were dedicated to the book for which the University now apologizes.
All the culture that goes with you awaits you here.
Subscribe
Babelia
The literary news analyzed by the best critics in our weekly newsletter
RECEIVE IT
#Harvard #removes #human #skin #binding #library #book