The living and the dead cohabited Paris until the late eighteenth century, when, in the name of public health, measures were taken to drive the latter from the city. Cemeteries were removed from urban space, and corpses started to be viewed as terrifyingly noxious substances. Human Remains examines that exuberant anxiety to discover the irrational, indeed erotic, forces motivating the medicalization of death. Working across a broad range of disciplines, the book seeks to understand the meaning of the dead and their role in creating one of the most important cities of the contemporary world.