CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — Harvard University said it has removed human skin from the binding of a 19th-century book about the afterlife that has been in its collections since the 1930s. The decision came after a review found ethical concerns with the book’s origin and history.

The book, Des Destinees de L’ame, meaning Destinies of the Soul, was written by Arsene Houssaye, a French novelist and poet, in the early 1880s. The printed text was given to a physician, Ludovic Bouland, who “bound the book with skin he took without consent from the body of a deceased female patient in a hospital where he worked,” Harvard said in a recent statement. The book has been at the university’s Houghton Library.