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Dr. Ludovic Bouland a physician who practiced medicine in hospitals and loved reading.
His friend, the writer Arsène Houssaye, gave him a copy of his philosophical essay meditating on the human soul.
Bouland loved the book so completely that he rebound it — using skin harvested from a patient who had died in his care — and left a note inside: A book about the human soul deserved to have a human covering.
After his death, the book found its way to Harvard, where it sat quietly on a library shelf for many years, waiting to be checked out.
Dr. Bouland is dead.