6 Applied Biophysics 



"medical physicists" of the nineteenth century. Again, physics in 

 medicine certainly found one of its most able exponents in Helm- 

 holtz, whose mathematical and experimental ability transformed 

 the science of acoustics, while earlier in the century, a German 

 physicist, Ritter, seems to have been the discoverer of ultraviolet 

 radiation, although hotly followed by WoUaston, another medical 

 physicist. 



So from the medical student, Galileo, interested in the swing- 

 ing of a lamp as a time-keeper to his pulse, to Lawrence and his 

 giant cyclotron on the hilltop in California, technical advances 

 in medicine have been linked with physics. 



As we have already indicated, physics may influence medicine 

 very profoundly by its general conceptions of the Universe, as 

 well as by its detailed techniques. The "recent advances" of 

 science are bound to excite the more progressive and impatient 

 medical men of each generation. Again, any adequate account 

 of these relationships is a task for the medical historian, but it 

 is tempting to stray a little and recall the influence of the New- 

 tonian philosophy on the medical practitioner of the early eight- 

 eenth century. Newton contributed directly to, and indeed in one 

 sense founded, the science of radiology with his studies of the 

 visible solar spectrum. In radiation physics his influence is ob- 

 vious, and no one reading, for example, Herschel's description 

 of the experiments following his discovery of infrared radiation 

 in the year 1800, could fail to note the similarity of the train of 

 thought and experiments with those in Newton's Opticks, pub- 

 lished about a hundred years earlier. Newton, however, influ- 

 enced medical thought very profundly in many other ways, as for 

 example, by his "mechanical" explanation of the Universe, which 

 gripped the imagination of his contemporaries. It is interesting 

 to recall that in 1702, one of the most remarkable physicians of 

 the early eighteenth century, Richard Mead, published A Me- 

 chanical Account of Poisons, complaining a little that "to unravel 

 the Springs of the several Motions upon which such Appearances 

 do depend, and Trace up all the Symptoms to first Causes, re- 

 quires some Art as well as Labour." Let Mead speak for himself 

 in his preface : 



