THE HISTORY OF FORMATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF MEDICAL PHYSICS

Abstract

The aim of the work – to highlight the historical ways of development of medical physics, to reveal the regularities of the formation and development of fundamental physical and medical knowledge, their interrelations, to show their evolution and significance for the past and present.

The main body. The article deals with the initial stage of the history of the formation and development of medical physics, which provided an influence on the direction of development of physics and medicine in the future and which is inextricably linked with the general history of mankind. It is shown how the scientific picture of the world has changed during the millennia, the complementarity and continuity of physics and medicine are considered.

It is the knowledge of the history of science that provides an impact on the direction of development of science and contributes to its progress.

As John Bernal accurately pointed out, “Only ... knowledge of history can warn scientists, for the sake of the prestige they enjoy, from the role of blind and helpless pawns in the great modern drama of use and abuse of science.”

Conclusion. The article adduces the stages of the formation of the atomic teaching, as well as the iatromechanical (metaphysical) direction in science (XVI–XVIII centuries), whose representatives tried to explain all physiological phenomena and processes based on mechanics, were considered, believing that the disease is a consequence of violations of the laws of motion of individual smallest particles of an organism that is a kind of mechanical machine.