Anthropodermic Bibliopegy, or,Using Human Skins in Books Binding:A historical study

Document Type : Original Article

Abstract

This study discuss the history of ‘Book Binding Phenomenon’ which mean
that using human skin in binding books. This Phenomenon has been appeared,
virtually, during the 16th century, began in the 19th century and had disappeared
at the beginning of the 20th century. The motivations of this phenomenon have
been varied between a punishment of the guilty criminals and a desire of some
people to prevent their skin from decomposition after death, also the marginalized
and the poor, in addition to the judicial decisions as a source of access to human
skin. That skin was drowned in known places such as the French city, "Midon",
and by famous binders such as John Stockton Hog and Rapparlier who was the
binder of the book entitled "Dance of death". Doctors also took part in this
practice by their hands, but the collectors of the books kept it from extinction to
appear in the modern era and cause a noise in the antique libraries which rose to
search for these human covers by using advanced techniques as "mass
spectrometry analysis" in collaboration with prominent scientists as "Daniel P.
Kirby."
The study pointed to some people who used their skins in Binding of
books such as John Horwood, William Burke, etc., in completely absence of all
religious, morals and legal matters, whether by the courts or doctors. Despite the
allegations surrounding binding of books with human skins generally, and some
of them correctly proved, but others have not yet proved, just like a copy of the
“Holy Quran” with the skin of an Arab sheikh named Bashir bin Salem al-Harthy
that had been found in the Cleveland Public Library, U.S.A. However, there are a
lot of books all over the world that had been covered with human skin in different
subjects and languages directions. According to language direction English came
in first rank with 41%. In subject direction Medicine came first with 45.5%. Finally,
by time line the 19th century came first with 59.1% from total number of books
which covered with human skin that included in the bibliography of the study, and
contained just twenty-two books covered with human skin

Keywords

Files

Share

How to cite

Statistics