Human Skin Books and a Family Connection: (Sort of) a Review of Dark Archives by Megan Rosenbloom

When I started college, I thought I wanted to be a doctor, at least until I realized that I really, really don’t like touching people. I knew I would be okay with the icky stuff, but I’ve never been accused of having a bedside manner, and some psychic at the Dickens Fair a decade ago said I had an “upsetting and intense aura.” So I dropped the pre-med idea and decided to do biology, despite how much I hated lab work. I love science. Scientists, unlike psychics, are valuable and essential members of society. But I enjoy reading about science more than I enjoy doing it, so it wasn’t meant to be. I briefly considered doing an “environmental studies” history program. I even took the intro class to see if it was worth it. It was not. Too much Robert Frost, not enough actually learning about the environment. So I dropped all the extra bullshit and came to terms with the fact that I was supposed to be a history major, plain and simple. 

Of course, being me, with my apparently “upsetting and intense aura,” I saw Dark Archives: A Librarian’s Investigation into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin by Megan Rosenbloom and purchased it IMMEDIATELY. In college, my thesis advisor affectionally mentioned that I was majoring in “morbid curiosity” after I did one of my first research papers on “Skulls and Brains in 19th century Medicine and Science” and then my seminar paper on “Embalming in Civil War New Orleans.” 

I have always been attracted to so-called disturbing topics. I’m not sure why. Many of my generation are desensitized by death through media but, at the same time, completely alienated from it. Most of the people I went to college with had never seen a body or gone to a funeral. Death is something abstract on TV, something that we think we understand but are never prepared for. As someone who has lost more than my fair share of friends far too early in life, I found myself very much alone in my acknowledgment of death. Through studying the history of medicine, I became comfortable with the more morbid side of life. I’m no less unsettled by death, but as long as I stare it in the face, it can’t sneak up on me. 

In Dark Archives, Rosenbloom delves into the history of books bound in human skin and, in doing so, examines the way that anatomical knowledge in the 19th century relied on the (mostly) nonconsensual dissection of the poor and unprotected. The book provides important context in a format and tone accessible to everyone, whether or not they have a history degree. With the benefit of modern technology that, for the first time, makes it viable to authenticate books that claim to be bound in human skin, Dark Archives poses questions I hadn’t previously considered. Despite its dark subject matter, it felt like a light read, and for the most part, highly enjoyable and occasionally even funny. 

Of all the places to find a family connection, a book on human skin books is…I don’t even know what it is. Disturbing? Exciting? All of the above? Long story short, I recognized a name connected to one of the books Rosenbloom examined. I don’t particularly want to put my real full name on the internet, so I won’t specify which one. (I’m happy in my internet anonymity comfort zone) At first, I thought it was a weird coincidence, but somewhere in the back of my head, I remembered that a branch of my family had been based around that region during most of the 19th century. It was technically possible that we were related. I did some digging and realized that not only was my surname connected to someone who had once owned an anthropodermic book, but another member of that family shared my father’s middle name, another family name from that era. My dad has been working on a massive genealogy project for years now, so I called him (probably too early in the morning for a conversation about books made of human skin), and with his research, I was able to connect these people to my oldest known ancestor in the united states, some terrifying puritan who had immigrated in the 1630s. So yes, we were related! It isn’t a direct connection, and our families diverged a generation before the book was made, but stretching out my old genealogy muscles was extremely gratifying.

I emailed my old thesis advisor to share the news, and she suggested that “morbid curiosity” was genetic, and found the connection very exciting, which was nice to hear, especially since my family’s response was mainly “eewwwwwwww,” which is suppose is fair.

Book Info: Dark Archives by Megan Rosenbloom. Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2020