The veneration of relics is a well-known religious practice, but the tradition also influenced the treatment of secular saints like Galileo and Descartes, whose bones were seen as symbols of their genius. When Galileo was exhumed in 1737 in Florence, Italy, for transfer to a more lavish tomb, several fingers, a tooth and a vertebra were plucked from his skeleton to be kept as relics. When Descartes was exhumed in Sweden in 1666 for reburial in France, a guard stole his skull, and the French ambassador pocketed his right index finger. During the French Revolution, a conservator reported that he’d carved some of Descartes’ bones into rings, which he distributed to “friends of the good philosophy.”

The idea of turning the dead into jewelry wouldn’t have seemed strange to the Victorians, who often wore rings, lockets and other adornments made from the hair of dead loved ones. The Romantics were particularly serious about these things, and Mary Shelley went so far as to keep Percy Shelley’s heart — plucked from his beachfront funeral pyre — in her desk drawer until she died. In her defense, keeping a heart as a relic wasn’t entirely uncommon: Voltaire’s heart is still kept at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, while Chopin’s is preserved in alcohol at Warsaw’s Church of the Holy Cross.

Hearts and hair weren’t the only bodily remnants once kept around the house. After the author and statesman Thomas More was beheaded in 1535, his devoted daughter Margaret rescued his boiled-and-tarred head from its pike on London Bridge, preserved it with spices, and later asked to be buried with it in her arms. And the widow of the writer and adventurer Sir Walter Raleigh kept his embalmed head in a case after he was executed in 1618.

Today these stories strike us as macabre; they display an intimacy with death that seems downright unhealthy. But taken as signs of their times, it’s possible that they actually show a healthier relationship with death than the one we have now. Despite the (frequently commendable) advances that have removed death as a constant presence in our lives, it remains inevitable, and many of us are ill prepared when it comes.

The erasure of death also allows us to imagine that our mortal trivialities and anxieties are permanent, while a consistent awareness of death — for those who can stomach it — can help us live in the here and now, and teach us to treasure what we already have. In fact, a study by University of Missouri researchers released this spring found that contemplating mortality can encourage altruism and helpfulness, among other positive traits.