In this book, Professor Francis Duck has written a fascinating story of the origins of medical physics. It starts in Renaissance Italy and ends with the discovery of x-rays, as modern medical physics emerges. The book is a celebration of the lives and contributions of those who knew that the principles of physics are essential to clinical medicine. The stories of biomechanics, medical electricity, physiological measurement, physiological optics and bioenergetics are all told. The French Revolution forged them into a single discipline. The subsequent impact on medical education is recounted. National characteristics are shown to have affected the spread of medical physics to Germany, England, Scotland and eventually the USA. The book includes 94 figures showing historical portraits, instruments and documents. It includes mini-biographies of 100 scientists and docors and cites over 400 historical references. Previously untold, much of the material has been recovered from otherwise unpublished archive documents. It is a story of extraordinary people, each striving to apply their knowledge of physics in order to lift clinical medicine from its historical state of ignorance, guesswork and precedent.