The area of medical physics is usually associated with applications in radiology and in the medical use of radioisotopes. That medical physics actually embraces a much broader field is well demonstrated by this volume which consists of eight review papers by invited speakers to the First International Conference on Medical Physics held in Harrogate, England, in September 1965.
These papers are preceded by a brief but extremely interesting review of the history of medical physics by the president of the conference, Prof W. V. Mayneord. In this section Mayneord expresses an immense enjoyment of the "misguided enthusiasms" of Isaac Newton's physician, Richard Mead, one of the early proponents of the use of mathematical and physical techniques in medicine. He is quoted as saying:
It is very evident that all other Methods of improving Medicine have been found Ineffectual, by the Stand It has been at these Three or Four thousand