The Case of the Shapely Shadow

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From time to time I have tried to emphasize the importance of legal medicine by writing brief forewords to the Perry Mason books and dedicating them to outstanding figures in the field. It is, of course, only natural that nearly all of these men have been doctors of medicine, for the most part those who have specialized in forensic pathology.

I now want to make a dedication to a man who is a lawyer, rather than a doctor, and who has done much to advance the cause of legal medicine.

Marshall Houts, a former member of the FBI, an undercover investigator during the war in foreign countries, an attorney at law, a former college professor in the field of criminal law, has worked with me for years in the Court of Last Resort.

In recent years he has devoted much of his time to the field of legal medicine, trying to see that attorneys understand the importance of having an arsenal of medical facts at their command; trying to see that the average general practitioner who is called as a witness will have some idea of the courtroom procedure, the tricks of cross-examination and a knowledge of the traps which shrewd attorneys quite frequently lay for the medical witness who is more versed in the science of medicine than in a knowledge of courtroom technique.

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