While the identities of most of the patients used by doctors to create human skin books are lost to history, the doctors who created them were often well respected in their fields, admired doctors and collectors occupying elevated social strata in a 19th-century United States clamoring for the legitimacy of its European counterparts. Unlike most doctors who created these books, Hough gave some identifying information about the source of his leather in his handwritten notes inside, referring to “Mary L___” in each of the three volumes made from her skin. It was this tidbit, plus her knowledge of Hough’s tenure at Old Blockley, that inspired the College of Physicians of Philadelphia librarian Beth Lander to dig into the Philadelphia General Hospital archives in search of the true identity of the woman who supplied the skin for three out of their five confirmed anthropodermic books.
This book is the biggest pain,” sighed John Pollack, a rare book librarian at the University of Pennsylvania. In my travels studying anthropodermic bibliopegy (a combination of the Greek root words for human [anthropos], skin [derma], book [biblion], and fasten [pegia]), I would soon become accustomed to this reaction from my fellow librarians. “A research library full of amazing stuff and people want to see this,” he said as he hefted the massive book in his hands.
Anthropodermic bibliopegy has been a specter on the shelves of libraries, museums, and private collections for over a century. Human skin books—mostly made by 19th-century doctor bibliophiles—are the only books that are controversial not for the ideas they contain but for the physical makeup of the object itself. They repel and fascinate, and their very ordinary appearances mask the horror inherent in their creation. Anthropodermic books tell a complicated and uncomfortable tale about the development of clinical medicine and the doctoring class, and the worst of what can come from the collision of acquisitiveness and a distanced clinical gaze. The weight of these objects’ fraught legacy transfers to the institutions where they are housed, and the library and museum professionals who are responsible for them. Each owner handles this responsibility differently.