"In 1666, the chevalier de Terlon, in charge of negotiating the exhumation and transportation of the body [with the Swedes], took a finger from it, "instrument of the defunct's immortal writings". Alexandre Lenoir, asked to recover Descartes' body for a museum of French monuments, scavenged a flat bone, from which he sculpted rings that he offered his friends. The skull of the Musée de l'Homme is engraved with the names of a dozen former owners, who apparently thought genius could be caught by contact"
As a result, Descartes' remains are scattered all over Europe, with up to five collections claiming to possess Descartes' skull. Fillon's team are waving questions of authenticity aside, but many experts doubt that the skull enclosed in a safecase in a basement of the Musée de l'Homme, once exposed in a Stockholm tavern, then bought for half the price of a bottle of aquavit by a chemist who sent it to his friend Georges Cuvier, is genuine.