{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"Loreplay","title":"Don't Judge a Book by It's Skin","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":1878,"description":"In this episode of Loreplay, we dive into one of the most unsettling intersections of medicine, power, and history: anthropodermic bibliopegy, the practice of binding books in human skin.While it sounds like folklore or horror fiction, this practice was very real—occurring primarily between the 17th and 19th centuries in Europe and the United States. It was most often carried out not by occultists or criminals, but by doctors, judges, and institutions with legal and social power.🧍‍♀️ Mary Lynch & Dr. John Stockton HoughMary Lynch was a young Irish immigrant who died in 1869 at Philadelphia General Hospital. She was poor, severely ill with tuberculosis, and unclaimed at death—circumstances that made her body legally accessible to medical authorities.After performing her autopsy, physician Dr. John Stockton Hough removed portions of her skin and later used it to bind three medical books, all dealing with female reproduction and health. Hough wrote inscriptions inside the books identifying the bindings as human skin and referencing Mary’s death. There is no evidence Mary consented to this use of her body.These books are now held by the College of Physicians of Philadelphia and have been scientifically tested and confirmed to be bound in human skin.🏛️ Harvard & Des destinées de l’âmeOne of the most well-known anthropodermic books is Des destinées de l’âme (The Destinies of the Soul), a 19th-century philosophical work by Arsène Houssaye. The book was gifted to physician Ludovic Bouland, who later bound it in the skin of an unnamed female patient who died in a French psychiatric hospital.Bouland left a handwritten note stating that “a book about the human soul deserved a human covering.”In 2014, Harvard University used peptide mass fingerprinting (PMF) to scientifically confirm that the binding was human skin. After extensive ethical review, Harvard announced in 2024 that the human skin had been removed from the book and placed into respectful care, acknowledging past...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/qrKRCVgS-SidSX8b9CGzZDHhnpF4bwxZyw2FLc5pukw/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS83MTBl/MDI3MGZkZGE0M2U0/MmJlYjhmNGQ4NjAy/NmY0Ny5wbmc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}