After numerous tests, scientists have confirmed a copy of French writer Arsene Houssaye's "Des destinees de l'ame" was bound with human skin.
*eying picture* Nice skin too -- no moles or beauty marks. You think that was back or buttcheek? It's definitely not chest because no nipple.
According to the library, Houssaye presented the text, described as "a meditation on the soul and life after death," to one of his friends, a book-loving medical doctor, in the mid-1880s. The recipient, Dr. Ludovic Bouland, bound the book "with skin from the unclaimed body of a female mental patient who had died of a stroke," the library said. Bouland left a note in the volume explaining what he had done. "A book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering," he wrote. Although binding a book in another person's skin may seem creepy nowadays, the library says it wasn't always so unusual and reviled. "Termed anthropodermic bibliopegy, the binding of books in human skin has occurred at least since the 16th century," it said. "The confessions of criminals were occasionally bound in the skin of the convicted, or an individual might request to be memorialized for family or lovers in the form of a book."
First of all, the only books that should ever be bound with human skin are volumes of magic spell and/or potions. Every great wizard knows that. Secondly, upon closer inspection I suspect that book might have a rash. You should probably have that looked at. "By a doctor?" Well I was going to say librarian, but hey, if you have medical insurance (can you get me some scrips?) Thanks to E V I L A R E S, who is so evil he had every book he owns rebound with human skin.
