https://www.nytimes.com/2024/0...k0.seQw.b2wPHcOi-ID1

quote:

Books Bound in Human Skin: An Ethical Quandary at the Library

Harvard’s recent decision to remove the binding of a notorious volume in its library has thrown fresh light on a shadowy corner of the rare book world.

Emotional recoil aside, it just doesn't look to me like human skin is thick or study enough to make book covers.

You can make lamp shades from it.

Look at it as recycling. Otherwise our bodies mostly end up as polluting waste.


I recall putting a quite notorious book into 'reference and by special request only' because it was in danger of being abused by idiots. It remains the essential treatise on facial reconstruction for surgeons.

Written by a Nazi doctor who dissected jews/homosexuals and used other camp inmates to draw the illustrations of muscles nerves etc, later editions have the photos of subjects removed I believe.

But after 70 years it remains the reference work.

Knowledge of human anatomy has nothing to do with eugenics. Good Grief.

The problem with many dilemmas is a judgement between two ideas that 'young' people, inexperienced or untrained, jump at without proper consideration.

In the case of this book produced in horrific conditions, there was on one side a woke student body, and on the other a need by surgeons worldwide for the information held uniquely within it. Out of print for decades, most surgeons now source their own used copy and libraries effectively hide theirs.


I've handled books made from hides and honestly couldn't tell one type from another.

Leave the fur on and sealskin fur is nice!

In over 3 decades, the only weird book to handle was a rather bristly small bible, amazing condition original binding for an incunabulum, from the 14C. Unshaved goat or hog possibly, and felt very animal, oddly tactile.

You're acting like a troll.

You either don't know what eugenics is or you really don't care.

The former is incredible; the latter is disgusting.

I'm putting you on Ignore.

I don't spend my time taking to people who act like trolls.