We can only imagine the astonishment of a mortuary assistant in the 1920s when he unveiled the body of a well-respected male doctor in La Jolla to find out that he was, indeed, a woman. Scientists and community leaders wrote profusely about the scandal. One of those essays was discovered by the man who maintains the landmark documents of La Jolla — Michael Mishler, archivist and curator at the La Jolla Historical Society and its La Jolla Archive. “They described Dr. Perkins as a small, slight man who was very polite, and then some people said he was kind of mousy, but later they understood why,” Mishler said.