Anthropodermic bibliopegy
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Anthropodermic bibliopegy is the practice of binding books in human skin. As of April 2022, The Anthropodermic Book Project has examined 31 out of 50 books in public institutions supposed to have anth
A book bound in the skin of the murderer William Burke, on display in Surgeons' Hall Museum in Edinburgh
A 17th-century book on female virginity at the Wellcome Library, rebound in human skin by Dr. Ludovic Bouland around 1865
Bound in 1863 by Josse Schavye, the same binder of the genuine anthropodermic Vesalius' De Humani Corporis Fabrica in Brown University, and who bound at least four books with human leather in his lifetime.
Panel with Latin inscription in the book: Hic liber femineo corio convestitus est ("This book has been bound with the skin of a woman")
De Humani Corporis Fabrica Libri Septem is a set of books on human anatomy written by Andreas Vesalius and published in 1543. It was a major advance in the history of anatomy over the long-dominant wo
Anthropodermic bibliopegy
…can be seen in the associated Mütter Museum. The John Hay Library at Brown University owns four anthropodermic books, also confirmed by PMF: Vesalius's De Humani Corporis Fabrica, two nineteenth-century editions of Holbein's Dance of Death, and Mademoiselle Giraud, My Wife (1891). Three books in the libraries of Harvard University…
Title page. Andreae Vesalii Bruxellensis, scholae medicorum Patauinae professoris, de Humani corporis fabrica Libri septem (Andreas Vesalius of Brussels, professor at the school of medicine at Padua, On the Fabric of the Human Body in Seven Books).
The Fabrica is known for its highly detailed illustrations of human dissections, often in allegorical poses.
Image from Andreas Vesalius' De humani corporis fabrica (1543), page 163.
Image from De humani corporis fabrica (1543), page 372.