My friend Dr. Walter camp is an outstanding figure in the field of legal medicine.
One of his greatest attributes is the calm detached manner with which he approaches any scientific problem. It is impossible to think of Dr. Camp ever being “stampeded” so that he would lose his intellectual integrity on the one hand, or on the other hand let any personal or financial considerations color his judgment.
Dr. Camp is both an M.D. and a Ph.D., yet despite his intellectual and scientific achievements, and a brain which functions as unemotionally (and as accurately) as an adding machine, he remains a warm, friendly human being.
Dr. Camp is one of the country’s leading toxicologists. He is a Professor of Toxicology and Pharmacology at the University of Illinois and is Coroner’s Toxicologist for Cook County, which includes the seething metropolis of Chicago.
For the past couple of years he has been Secretary of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences, and heaven knows how much time, energy and time-consuming effort he and his personal secretary, Polly Cline, have poured into that organization.
Dr. Camp is no prima donna with a temperament, although his achievements and record would entitle him to develop all the idiosyncrasies of temperament; on the contrary, he loves to work with others, to become a member of a “team,” and then to minimize his own part in that team’s achievement.
Such men, who have the ability to get things done, who have the executive qualities necessary to co-ordinate the work of others, and the stability necessary to work with others, are rare.
This year, the annual meeting of the Academy of Forensic Sciences was held under the guidance of Dr. Camp, Secretary; Fred Inbau (Professor of Criminal Law at Northwestern University), President; and Dr. Richard Ford (head of the Department of Legal Medicine at Harvard University), Program Chairman. Those of us who attended found it one of the most inspirational and informative academy sessions ever to be held in an organization covering such a complex field. This was due mainly to the fact that these three men worked together as a team with such perfect co-ordination, such smooth co-operation, and such clockwork efficiency that many of us failed to realize the untold hours of planning, working, and almost constant consultation which made the extraordinary results possible.
Dr. Camp has worked on many a spectacular case where anyone less cool, less objective in his approach, would have been swept off his scientific feet There was for instance the famous Ragen case where a man on the receiving end of a shotgun blast was later claimed to have died because of mercuric poisoning. There was another famous case: that of a gangster awaiting execution in the electric chair who beat the executioner to the punch, reportedly with the aid of a lethal dose of strychnine.
Dr. Camp, as a referee in these cases, handled himself in a manner which was a credit to the best traditions of forensic science. He refused to be influenced by rumors, the pressures of interested parties, or popular excitement He approached the problems as a scientist, and he solved them as a scientist.
And so I dedicate this book to my friend:
WALTER J. R. CAMP, M.D., PH.D.
—Erle Stanley Gardner