Samuel D. Hodge Jr., chair of Fox School of Business’ Legal Studies Department, is co-author of Clinical Anatomy for Lawyers, the recently published first installment in a series of medical-legal textbooks published by the American Bar Association.

Hodge teaches law and anatomy at Temple University, and he is also an in-demand lecturer who has spoken at conferences and seminars across the country about his particular area of self-taught expertise: anatomy and trauma. Hodge has a gift for breaking down complex medical terms and concepts into metaphors that make sense to the least scientific person in the audience.

“Medicine plays a large role in the practice of law from a claim for personal injury to ascertaining the cause of death in a homicide investigation,” Hodge said. “My research fills that void by supplying attorneys with an explanation of how the human body works along with tips on how to present medical evidence to a jury or judge.”

In Clinical Anatomy for Lawyers, Hodge and co-author Dr. Jack E. Hubbard of the University of Minnesota School of Medicine provide an understanding of the human body and its many systems with the sophistication of a medical text and the ease of a For Dummies guide. In addition to the various systems – such as the skeletal, nervous, muscular and reproductive – the textbook covers trauma, immune disorders, pain and diagnostic imaging, which is what led Hodge to learn more about anatomy.

It was while reading a scholarly article that Hodge, a color-blind aspiring artist, saw a color image generated by a new diagnostic test that reminded him of an abstract painting. Anatomy had him at a glance.

Now, he’s the author of five other published textbooks – Law and Society, Thermography and Personal Injury Litigation, The Legal Environment of the New Millennium and, with Hubbard, Anatomy for Litigators, a book that was named the best legal publication in 2007. As part of the new medical series for the American Bar Association, Hodge will author three more medical-legal guides during the next five years. These books will cover the spine, traumatic brain injuries and diagnostic tests.

Medical Fun Facts

These oddities of the human body are drawn from a slideshow Hodge uses before he delivers a lecture.

• Your left lung is smaller than your right lung to make room for your heart.
• The brain itself cannot feel pain.
• The tooth is the only part of your body that can’t heal itself.
• Fingernails grow nearly four times faster than toenails.
• If saliva cannot dissolve something, you can’t taste it.
• You get a new stomach lining every three to four days.
• Women’s hair is about half the diameter of men’s hair.
• A full bladder is roughly the size of a softball.
• The human body is estimated to have 60,000 miles of blood vessels.
• Women blink twice as many times as men do.