A book at the Harvard University library has been discovered to be bound in human skin, scientists confirmed on Thursday.
The 19th century tome, a collection of essays on the soul and life after death by French novelist and poet Arsène Houssaye, was created by using a female mental patient's skin from the back, the Telegraph reported.
The unclaimed patient allegedly died of a stroke, according to researchers.
In the mid-1880's, the book - whose title translates to "Destinies of the soul" - was given to Ludovic Bouland, a friend and noted doctor, by the French author, Harvard says.
"Tests have revealed that Houghton Library's copy of Arsène Houssaye's "Des destinées de l'ame" ... is without a doubt bound in human skin," the library said in a blog post.
Inside, Bouland left a handwritten note explaining his binding choice, NBC News reported.
"This book is bound in human skin parchment on which no ornament has been stamped to preserve its elegance. By looking carefully you easily distinguish the pores of the skin," he wrote. "A book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering: I had kept this piece of human skin taken from the back of a woman."
Although the news of the human skin-bound book was reported by Houghton Library last May, an expert at the university was able to confirm it Wednesday.
"By taking microscopic samples from the binding and analyzing it through peptide mass fingerprinting, a technique that identifies proteins to create a peptide mass fingerprint (PMF), analysts were able to pinpoint its source," according to NBC News.
The PMF "matched the human reference, and clearly eliminated other common parchment sources, such as sheep, cattle and goat," said Bill Lane, director of the Harvard Mass Spectrometry and Proteomics Resource Library.
In the 19th century, it was hardly unusual to apply the technique of using tanned human skin, according to the university's blog.
However, it was more common to use skin from the bodies of executed criminals being donated to scientific research and training.
