ELEMENTARY MEDICAL PHYSICS,

byHoward O. Steams '15, Macmillan Co., NewYork, 1947, pp. xiii, 354. $4-75-

About 15 years ago a committee was appointed representing the Medical and Physics Societies which was to bring in a report regarding the most satisfactory kind o£ text for presenting physics to medical students. (The chairman of that committee was Dr. W. E. Chamberlain, Professor of Radiology of Temple University. His son Otto '41 is making an enviable reputation as a nuclear physicist.) The report of the committee was to the effect that physics for medical students should be pure, standard physics. Fundamental physical principles were to be stressed, the applications would look after themselves.

But physics has become a vast domain. There must be selection even in the most elementary work. Obviously it is not necessary for a medical student to know the details about an electric generator. But he ought to know quite a little about an x-ray tube. Professor Stearns has set forth the main principles of the subject, and has shown the application of these principles in a great number of devices used in medicine. The list is Very extensive. The illustrations in the book might lead one to think that he is visiting a modern hospital. Unquestionably a medical student would have his interest aroused by seeing the great extent to which physics apparatus is used in the field in which he is to work. And he will learn that very ordinary physics apparatus is given highfalutin names when it is used in medicine. A sphygmomanometer, for example, is merely a device for measuring pressure, similarly for an electrocardiograph, an electroencephalograph.

There is an excellent chapter on x-rays and a very good one on radium and artificial radioactivity. Perhaps there is one criticism re- garding choice of topics. The reviewer thinks that more space should have been given to the Geiger counter and its applications. Radiation therapy is one of the very large and new domains in medicine. This topic has received considerable attention in the chapters on x-rays and radium, but the use of tracers, radioactive isotopes, which can be followed through the body by means of a Geiger counter is a very important new field.

Unquestionably medical students will find this text an extremely useful one. It will show them that they must understand certain principles of physics in order intelligently to use the tools of their trade.