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1 " No wonder the public persists in connecting the idea of human skin books with Nazis. It's easier to believe that objects of human skin are made by monsters like Nazis and serial killers, and not the well respected doctors the likes of whom parents want their children to become someday. "
― Megan Rosenbloom , Dark Archives: A Librarian's Investigation Into the Science and History of Books Bound in Human Skin
2 " Anthropodermic books tell a complicated and uncomfortable take about the development of clinical medicine and the doctoring class, and the worst of what can come from the collision of acquisitiveness and clinical distancing. "
3 " Anthropodermic bibliopegy had 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. They repel and fascinate, and their very ordinary appearances mask the horror inherent in their creation. "
4 " When thinking about anthropodermic books, we can't simply fault the doctors of the past for engaging in behavior that was tacitly or explicitly sanctioned by the laws and mores of their time and place in history; nor can we expect them to retroactively adhere to the deeply important beliefs we now have about informed consent. What we can do, and have a moral obligation to do, is examine the institutions in which these injustices were able to proceed, learn from their mistakes, and critically view the pernicious ways these mindsets might persist in our current society and fight to eradicate them. "
5 " Human skin books force us to consider how we approach death and illness, and what we owe to those who have been wronged or used by medical practitioners. "
6 " We can't go back in time and stop anthropodermic books from being created, but since they exist, they have important lessons to teach us - if we're willing to reckon with their dark past and all that it tells us about the culture in which they were created. "
― Megan Rosenbloom
7 " The empathetic doctor must think "as if" she inhabits the patient's world during the clinical encounter, without losing sight of the fact that her own natural reactions would likely be very different from her patient's. The doctor must strive to clarify the patient's "almost articulated fear," accept where the patient is in his journey even if the doctor thinks he's headed in the wrong direction, and take the time to think and reflect about this loaded interaction. "
8 " I survived having learned a valuable life lesson: never stick your hand somewhere you can’t see. "
