Books Bound in Human Flesh Discovered

Macabre books bound in human flesh found in Harvard University’s library.

A few years ago, three separate books were discovered in Harvard University’s library that had particularly strange-looking leather covers. Upon further inspection, it was discovered that the smooth binding was actually human flesh… in one case, skin harvested from a man who was flayed alive. Yep, definitely the creepiest library ever.

As it turns out, the practice of using human skin to bind books was actually pretty popular during the 17th century. It’s referred to as Anthropodermic bibliopegy and proved pretty common when it came to anatomical textbooks. Medical professionals would often use the flesh of cadavers they’d dissected during their research.

Source: Harvard discovers three of its library books are bound in human flesh

More human bound book stories (and pictures):
Book Bound Human Skin goes on display!
Book Covered in Human Skin?