

*PHYSICS IN MEDICINE 



W. V. MAYNEORD, D.Sc. 

 Physics Department, Royal Cancer Hospital (Free), London 



Introduction 



DURING the last fifty years discoveries and developments in 

 physics have intruded so far into medicine that physical 

 methods of treatment and diagnosis have become indis- 

 pensable, yet physics still hovers a little uncertainly on the 

 fringes of medical research, education, and organization. This 

 is not surprising when one considers that physics is the most 

 highly developed and abstract of the fundamental sciences, and 

 the practice of medicine the most highly developed of the social 

 arts. Numerical precision, mathematical analysis, and conse- 

 quent extreme generality and abstraction are the distinguishing 

 marks or, at least, implied ideals of physics, while in medicine 

 the individual patient and his often incomprehensible complex- 

 ities fill the picture, sometimes to the exclusion of general prin- 

 ciples and more abstract erudition. Yet it is recognized more 

 and more clearly that physics has now an important part to play 

 in medical research and even in the daily treatment of the patient. 

 Correspondingly, physics itself might benefit immensely from 

 closer contact with the medical and ^biological problems awaiting 

 solution. 



Some Applications of Physics in Medicine 



The most striking and perhaps best known of the recent appli- 

 cations of physics in medicine lie in the sphere of medical radi- 



* This book is based on a collection of articles in the British Medical Bulletin. 



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