CCI2014050718

TANNKI) HUMAŃ SKIN (Summary)

Werner Schmitzer

Because of the belief that the bodies of the executed possess healing and magie pcwer, their skin has in the past been tanned and used for the preparation of magie belts. Such belts were for instance sold at pharmacies in Dresden and Leipzig in the 17th century.

The custom of tanning of human skin is, hcwever, much older than that, the skin being mostly applied to cover worthly books. It has been socially admissible for a person to sell his skin to a tanner under the condition that after his death it will be tumed in leather. For this, high prices were demanded which is wel reflected in the saying "he sold his skin dearly".

But most commonly, only the skin of executed criminals was available. When in 1631 the tanners in Leipzig objected to tanning the skins which had been peeled off from criminals during anatomical dissections, on the ground that that would blemish their good repute, the objection was over-ruled and they were ordered to proceed with tanning: the authorities' reasoning being that the very purpose of Capital punishment was to purify the body and the soul of the convicted.

Examples of the use of tanned human skin are:

-    The bookbinding of one volume of Hippocrates' work in the Niedersachsischen Staats- und Universitatsbibliothek

in Gottingen (published as Hippocrates, Opera, Basel; Froben, 1538).

-    The bookbinder Paul Kersten from Breslau in Silesia announced in the joumal Die Heftlade, Berlin 1922, that he had covered 6 volumes with human sumach-tanned human skin.

-    The Bookbinding of the first exemplar of "Himmel und Erde" by the famous scholar Flammarion (dec. 1925 Paris). Flammarion inherited the skin from a young but incurably ill lady, the shoulders of whom he used to admire.

The testatrix demanded in her will that the skin from her shoulders must serve as binding materiał for the first book written by Flammarion after her demise.

-    The bookbindings of 3 books "Zweihundert beruehmte Maenner", "Gil Blas" and "Episoden aus dem Leben der Insekten" by Allemand Kauffmann. The books were bound in the writer's cwn skin.

-    The bookbindings of 2 books: "Was man Gutes und Boeses von den Frauen sagt" by D. Dechanel and "Anthology of Poems" by Anakreon; both bindings in skin belonging to

a Negress. (In the library of the Paris Lawyer Cheramy).

-    The bookbinding of "Geheimnisse von Paris", madę by the bookbinder M. Bautille in 1874 in woman's skin.

-    One tanned human skin is to be found in the collection of the Municipal Museum in Zittau.

According to P. Kersten tanned human skin resembles both pigskin and goatskin in that its grain displays both perforations and saffian pattem. The grain is coarser on the back than on the sides, the thickness of the skin is about 2-2,5 mm and it has a great tensile strength.

Our investigation supports these observations, although a resemblance of human skin to pigskin alone, could be noticed. The scales of the grain of tanned human skin are smaller than those of pigskin; while the flesh side appears to be identical to that of pigskin; but with less deep pores. Also the structure of tanned human skin is much like that of pigskin; i.e. there is no elear distinction in the corium between papillary and reticular strata.

The above remarks are illustrated by microphotographs of grain and cross section taken from human skin and pigskin. Im comparing them one should bear in mind that the samples in ąuestion represent vegetable-tanned human skin and chrome-tanned pigskin resepctively.

The Jivaros, the head-hunting Indians of South America (the motive for head-hunting being the inerease in personal mental strength and repute through annihilation of the same in the enemy) use this method to produce shrunken heads:

The skuli of a head is first samshed and the bonę fragments are removed via the aperture in the neck. The reminder of the head is then boiled in pure water, as any additions may affect the hair. After boiling, the hollow head is filled, with heated pebbles and then with hot sand, which are shaken inside the head to scorch any remaining flesh. At