Did you know that the Harvard library contains at least four different books bound in human flesh?
Page turning,
~Curtis Rx
Curtis Rx
Harken Strangers! So you’ve come here on this dark and stormy night to hear my dastardly little tale. Let me begin by saying, that no matter how shocking it may seem, every crimson ounce of it is true. I am an advocate of mischief and a creator of turmoil. I compose ghastly music based on eerie circumstance and delightful tragedy in the band Creature Feature and the band Rufus Rex. I direct strange films depicting ill-fated events and ghoulish irony. I am a writer of the macabre, as opposed to a revolver, I use a sharpened pencil to displace my brains. I gently squeeze the trigger and splatter the page with metaphor. Read, watch, and listen, you never know what wonderful terrible things you might unearth.
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28 Comments
I’d like to know what these books are about…
Is it one person per book? Or is it just random scraps of flesh that are sewn togther? …just curious…
well… this is fun… but about what is this book? I think in many things… maybe one crazy sacrifice and one old civilization believe in some insane necessity of this ah.
I thought it would be gum
I have a strange feeling one of them is The Book of the Dead.
That’s somewhat disturbing but somewhat awesome.. I want to know what books they are.
i wonder what they feel like, and where they came from. i’d love to read them
Hmm, I wonder if they’re written in blood….
i don’t know what’s nastier the fact that such books exist or the fact that there’s more than one.
In the 18th and 19th Centuries it was common to bind accounts of murder trials in the killer’s skin – known as anthropodermic bibliopegy.
And now I’d like t visit the Harvard library…
If there were nine, we could pretend they were the books that opened the Ninth Gate…>: D
Yeah, and there’s one (not sure if it’s in the Harvard library, but it’s somewhere) that has a little note in the back that says something like “this is all that’s left of my dear friend, so-and-so. He was flayed alive by something-or-other.”
My question is, how did he retrieve the skin? Were the people who flayed so-and-so just like “oh, here you go”? Did he get it back for the express purpose of binding a book with it?
id like to know if i could read these books. or if there are anynear me that i could read! thats sooo sweet!!! i want a book bind in flesh!!! i wouldnt mind one made from my stupid brothers flesh!!!!!
I had to find out more about these books and what they might contain. Since I can’t walk to the Harvard library and see these volume for myself, I found a neat article in The Harvard Crimson which describes some of the books and their contents (which others have no doubt already seen).
Were I working at the Harvard Library I would also be careful about bringing these books to the forefront should others get like-minded ideas. Of course, what better way to memorialize a family member than turning their skin into a favored book cover?
I think the family ashes to diamond industry is going to take a hit…..
Now I have a strange urge to read something squishy.
that is something i love to know… i would love to read it… actually sounds like an idea to do if someone made a book adn said when they died they would love to have their flesh as teh cover…i would….im working on a bok adn that sounds like a great idea…i would use my flesh as teh cover then have it to give to my future children then theirs and so on so forth,
planning ahead,
Trisha
Human flesh as in skin, muscle, bones, or veins?
This one, I did know. I think the local theatre has one that is as well…
Also, as for Axe2Head’s question: As in the skin. Human skin makes an incredible leather, from what I am told.
One of those lovely little books is a 1605 manual for Spanish lawyers. Bought in New Orleans for 42 dollars. Which is very inspiring as I live twenty minutes away from New Orleans. If I come to posses on of those books, I am demanding a free messenger bag.
I now know what I’d like for my birthday~
interesting….i wonder where they are….i bet the Dean keeps them.
I must look for these books now…..
I am guessing they are old medical books associated with some morbid doctors who wanted to show dedication. They also have these at the mutter museum in Philadelphia. When I die, I can only hope my flesh will go to such a just cause…
Most of the flesh-bound books are medical books. The books were often created by physicians, who had access to human flesh from amputated limbs and patients, who had no one to claim the remains. One of the books in the Harvard library is a 1605 manual for Spanish lawyers.
…but wuts even interesting is that the Skull and Bones control them (…and thats not funny….because its probably true xD)
eek gad! Somebody alert Bruce Campbell that the Necronomicon is real!
Memento Mori, a Spanish law book from 1605 is one of them.
Another one is Metamorphoses, I found an article about it:
the Medical School’s 1597 French translation of Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” bears a small penciled annotation, “Bound in human skin,” on the inside cover.
I would check out this article if you want to know more about:
http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2006/2/2/the-skinny-on-harvards-rare-book/
ha, thats why i’m going there for College!