Scraps of paper recovered from a set of 16th-century books are from a compilation of 3rd-century Roman laws thought to have been lost to history, scientists say.

The book's first owner, French physician Dr. Ludovic Bouland (1839–1933), created the binding with the skin of a deceased patient in the hospital where he worked while he was a medical student.

A version of this article appears in print on March 29, 2024, Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Harvard Removes Book Binding of Human Skin.

A copy of the 19th-century book Des Destinées de l'Ame — or Destinies of the Soul, a meditation on life after death — was found in 2014 to be bound in the skin of a deceased woman.