The Case of the Duplicate Daughter

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The field of legal medicine is exacting, and it is a difficult field in which to achieve distinction. Relatively few men have gone to the top of the ladder.

The good medico-legal expert knows more about detective work than Sherlock Holmes, as much or more law than the average lawyer, and must be firmly grounded in all branches of medicine. In addition, he must have a quick, perceptive mind, be able to express his thoughts clearly and concisely and have such self-control that he can’t be rattled or enraged by the sneering type of cross-examination with which some attorneys try to embarrass a medical witness.

To achieve international distinction in this field is an honor indeed, and it is a distinction that has been achieved by my friend, Doctor Francis Edward Camps.

Dr. Camps is as much at home working with Scotland Yard on some puzzling matter as he is rendering services as a consultant while visiting friends in the United States. There is no room here to list his honors in England, but in the United States he is a member of the Harvard Associates in Police Science, and a Fellow in the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. He has written a most interesting book dealing with his work in the famous Christie case in Great Britain (Medical and Scientific Investigations in the Christie Case — Medical Publications Ltd.) and that book alone shows the outstanding qualities of the man: his painstaking attention to detail, his innate shrewdness, his thorough training and, in addition to that, his ability to express himself so interestingly that this work, which is really a scientific treatise in post-mortem detection, reads as absorbingly as any mystery novel ever written.

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