Numerous discoveries made by scientists during sleep make one think: either great people have brilliant dreams more often than ordinary managers, or they simply have the opportunity to realize them. But we all know that “everything is possible” is the same rule for everyone, just like everyone has dreams from time to time. Another thing is that great scientists do not just look at their subconscious at the moment of deep sleep, they continue to work, and their thoughts in a dream are probably deeper than in reality.

René Descartes (1596-1650), great French scientist, philosopher, mathematician, physicist and physiologist

He assured that prophetic dreams he saw at the age of twenty-three directed him on the path of great discoveries. On November 10, 1619, in a dream, he picked up a book written in Latin, on the very first page of which the secret question was displayed: “Which way should I go?”. In response, according to Descartes, "The Spirit of Truth revealed to me in a dream the interconnection of all sciences." After three centuries in a row, his work had a huge impact on science.

The dream of Niels Bohr brought him the Nobel Prize, while still a student he managed to make a discovery that changed the scientific picture of the world. He dreamed that he was in the Sun - a shining clot of fire-breathing gas - and the planets whistled past him. They revolved around the Sun and were connected with it by thin threads. Suddenly, the gas solidified, the "sun" and "planets" shrank, and Bohr, by his own admission, woke up as if from a shock: he realized that he had discovered the model of the atom that he had been looking for for so long. The "sun" from his dream was nothing but a motionless core, around which the "planets" - electrons revolved!

What really happened in the dream of Dmitry Mendeleev (1834-1907)

Dmitry Mendeleev I saw my table in a dream, and his example is not the only one. Many scientists admitted that they owe their discoveries to their amazing dreams. From their dreams, not only the periodic table came into our lives, but also the atomic bomb.
“There are no such mysterious phenomena that could not be understood,” said Rene Descartes (1596-1650), the great French scientist, philosopher, mathematician, physicist and physiologist. However, at least one inexplicable phenomenon was well known to him on personal example. The author of many discoveries made during his life in various fields, Descartes did not hide the fact that several prophetic dreams seen by him at the age of twenty-three.
The date of one of these dreams is known exactly: November 10, 1619. It was on that night that the main direction of all his future work was revealed to René Descartes. In that dream, he picked up a book written in Latin, on the very first page of which the secret question was displayed: “Which way should I go?”. In response, according to Descartes, "The Spirit of Truth revealed to me in a dream the interconnection of all sciences."
How this happened, now one can only guess, only one thing is known for certain: the research, which was inspired by his dreams, brought fame to Descartes, making him the greatest scientist of his time. For three centuries in a row, his work had a huge impact on science, and a number of his works in physics and mathematics remain relevant to this day.

It turns out that Mendeleev's dream became widely known with light hand A.A. Inostrantsev, a contemporary and acquaintance of the scientist, who once went into his office and found him in the most gloomy state. As Inostrantsev later recalled, Mendeleev complained to him that “everything came together in my head, but I can’t express it in a table.” And later he explained that he worked for three days in a row without sleep, but all attempts to put his thoughts into a table were unsuccessful.
In the end, the scientist, extremely tired, nevertheless went to bed. It was this dream that later went down in history. According to Mendeleev, everything happened like this: “I see in a dream a table where the elements are arranged as needed. I woke up, immediately wrote it down on a piece of paper - only in one place did it later turn out to be the necessary amendment.
But the most intriguing thing is that at the time when Mendeleev dreamed of the periodic system, the atomic masses of many elements were incorrectly established, and many elements were not studied at all. In other words, starting only from the scientific data known to him, Mendeleev simply could not have made his brilliant discovery! And this means that in a dream he received more than just an insight. Opening periodic system, for which the scientists of that time simply did not have enough knowledge, can be safely compared with the foresight of the future.
All these numerous discoveries made by scientists during sleep make one think: either great people have dreams-revelations more often than mere mortals, or they simply have the opportunity to realize them. Or maybe great minds just think little about what others will say about them, and therefore do not hesitate to seriously listen to the clues of their dreams? The answer to this is the call of Friedrich Kekule, with which he concluded his speech at one of the scientific congresses: “Let's study our dreams, gentlemen, and then we may come to the truth!”

Niels Bohr (1885-1962), great Danish scientist, founder of atomic physics

The great Danish scientist, the founder of atomic physics, Niels Bohr (1885-1962), while still a student, managed to make a discovery that changed the scientific picture of the world.
Once he dreamed that he was in the Sun - a shining clot of fire-breathing gas - and the planets whistled past him. They revolved around the Sun and were connected with it by thin threads. Suddenly, the gas solidified, the "sun" and "planets" shrank, and Bohr, by his own admission, woke up as if from a shock: he realized that he had discovered the model of the atom that he had been looking for for so long. The "sun" from his dream was nothing but a motionless core, around which the "planets" - electrons revolved!
Needless to say, the planetary model of the atom, seen by Niels Bohr in a dream, became the basis of all subsequent works of the scientist? She laid the foundation for atomic physics, bringing Niels Bohr the Nobel Prize and world recognition. The scientist himself, all his life, considered it his duty to fight against the use of the atom for military purposes: the genie, released by his dream, turned out to be not only powerful, but also dangerous ...
However, this story is only one long row many. So, the story of a no less amazing nocturnal insight that advanced world science forward belongs to another Nobel laureate, the Austrian physiologist Otto Levi (1873-1961).

Otto Levi (1873–1961), Austrian physiologist, Nobel laureate for services to medicine and psychology

Nerve impulses in the body are transmitted by an electrical wave - so doctors mistakenly believed until the discovery made by Levi. While still a young scientist, for the first time he disagreed with venerable colleagues, boldly suggesting that chemistry is involved in the transmission of a nerve impulse. But who will listen to yesterday's student who refutes scientific luminaries? Moreover, Levy's theory, for all its logic, had practically no evidence.
It wasn't until seventeen years later that Levi was finally able to perform an experiment that clearly proved him right. The idea of ​​the experiment came to him unexpectedly - in a dream. With the pedantry of a true scholar, Levi recounted in detail the insight that visited him for two nights in a row:
“... On the night before Easter Sunday 1920, I woke up and made some notes on a piece of paper. Then I fell asleep again. In the morning I had the feeling that I wrote down something very important that night, but I could not decipher my scribbles. The next night, at three o'clock, the idea came back to me. This was the design of an experiment that would help determine whether my hypothesis of chemical transmission is valid ... I immediately got up, went to the laboratory and set up an experiment on a frog's heart that I saw in a dream ... Its results became the basis of the theory of chemical transmission of a nerve impulse.
The research to which dreams made a significant contribution brought Otto Levi the Nobel Prize in 1936 for services to medicine and psychology.
Another famous chemist, Friedrich August Kekule, did not hesitate to publicly admit that it was thanks to sleep that he managed to discover the molecular structure of benzene, over which he had unsuccessfully struggled for many years before.

Friedrich August Kekule (1829-1896), famous German organic chemist

By his own admission, Kekule, for many years he tried to find the molecular structure of benzene, but all his knowledge and experience were powerless. The problem so tormented the scientist that sometimes he did not stop thinking about it night or day. Often he dreamed that he had already made a discovery, but all these dreams invariably turned out to be just the usual reflection of his daily thoughts and concerns.
So it was until the cold night of 1865, when Kekule dozed off at home by the fireplace and had an amazing dream, which he later described as follows: “Atoms jumped before my eyes, they merged into larger structures similar to snakes. As if spellbound, I followed their dance, when suddenly one of the "snakes" grabbed her tail and danced teasingly before my eyes. As if pierced by lightning, I woke up: the structure of benzene is a closed ring!

This discovery was a revolution for the chemistry of that time.
The dream impressed Kekule so much that he told it to his fellow chemists at one of the scientific congresses and even urged them to pay more attention to their dreams. Of course, many scientists would subscribe to these words of Kekule, and first of all, his colleague, the Russian chemist Dmitry Mendeleev, whose discovery, made in a dream, is widely known to everyone.
Indeed, everyone has heard that their periodic table chemical elements Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev "peeped" in a dream. However, how exactly did this happen? One of his friends spoke in detail about this in his memoirs.

Hello to all! At the urgent request of the readers of my blog, I continue to talk about what great discoveries in medicine were made by accident. You can read the beginning of this story.

1. How X-rays were discovered

Do you know how the X-ray was discovered? It turns out that at the beginning of the last century, no one knew anything about this device. This radiation was first discovered by the German scientist Wilhelm Roentgen.

How did the doctors of the last century perform operations? Blindly! The doctors did not know where the bone was broken or the bullet was sitting, they relied only on their intuition and sensitive hands.

The discovery happened by chance in November 1895. The scientist conducted experiments using a glass tube in which there was rarefied air.

Schematic representation of an x-ray tube. X - X-rays, K - cathode, A - anode (sometimes called anticathode), C - heat sink, Uh - cathode voltage, Ua - accelerating voltage, Win - water cooling inlet, Wout - water cooling outlet.

When he put out the light in the laboratory and was about to leave, he noticed a green glow in a jar on the table. As it turned out, this was the result of the fact that he forgot to turn off his device, which was located in another corner of the laboratory. When the device was turned off, the glow disappeared.

The scientist decided to cover the tube with black cardboard, and then create darkness in the room itself. He placed in the path of the rays various items: sheets of paper, boards, books, but the rays passed through them unhindered. When the scientist's hand accidentally got in the way of the rays, he saw moving bones.

The skeleton, like metal, turned out to be impenetrable to the rays. Roentgen was also surprised when he saw that the photographic plate, which was in this room, also lit up.

He suddenly realized that this was some kind of extraordinary case that no one had ever seen before. The scientist was so stunned that he decided not to tell anyone about this yet, but to study this incomprehensible phenomenon himself! Wilhelm called this radiation - "X-ray". That's how amazingly and suddenly the X-ray beam was discovered.

The physicist decided to continue this curious experiment. He called his wife, Frau Berta, suggesting that she put her hand under the "X-ray". After that, they were both stunned. The couple saw the skeleton of the hand of a man who did not die, but was alive!

They suddenly realized that there was a new discovery in the field of medicine, and such an important one! And they were right! To this day, all medicine uses x-rays. It was the first x-ray in history.

For this discovery in 1901, Roentgen was awarded the first Nobel Prize in the field of physics. At that time, scientists did not know that misuse x-rays are dangerous to health. Many received severe burns. However, the scientist lived to be 78 years old, doing scientific research.

On this greatest discovery A large area of ​​medical technologies began to develop and improve, for example, computed tomography and the same “X-ray” telescope that is capable of capturing rays from space.

Today, not a single operation can do without X-rays or tomography. So an unexpected discovery saves people's lives, helping doctors accurately diagnose and find a diseased organ.

With their help, it is possible to determine the authenticity of paintings, to distinguish between real gems from counterfeit ones, and at customs it became easier to detain contraband goods.

The most amazing thing is that this is all based on a random, ridiculous experiment.

2. How penicillin was discovered

Another unexpected event was the discovery of penicillin. To the first world war most of the soldiers died from various infections that fell on their wounds.

When a Scottish doctor, Alexander Fleming, began studying staphylococcal bacteria, he discovered that mold had appeared in his laboratory. Fleming suddenly saw that the staphylococcus bacteria that were close to the mold began to die!

Later, he derived from the same mold a substance that destroys bacteria, which was called "penicillin". But Fleming failed to complete this discovery, because. failed to isolate pure penicillin suitable for injection.

Some time passed when Ernst Cheyne and Howard Florey accidentally found Fleming's unfinished experiment. They decided to finish it. After 5 years they received pure penicillin.

Scientists injected it into sick mice, and the rodents survived! And those who were not introduced to the new medicine died. It was a real bomb! This miracle helped to heal from many ailments, among which are rheumatism, pharyngitis, even syphilis.

In fairness, it must be said that back in 1897, a young military doctor from Lyon, Ernest Duchen, watching Arab grooms lubricate the wounds of horses rubbed with saddles, scraping off the mold from the same wet saddles, made the above-mentioned discovery. He has done research on guinea pigs and has written his doctoral dissertation on useful properties penicillin. However, the Paris Pasteur Institute did not even accept this work for consideration, citing the fact that the author was only 23 years old. Glory came to Duchenne (1874-1912) only after his death, 4 years after Sir Fleming received the Nobel Prize.

3. How insulin was discovered

Insulin was also unexpectedly received. It is this drug that relieves millions of people with diabetes. In people with diabetes, one was accidentally discovered common feature- damage to the cells of the pancreas that secrete a hormone that coordinates blood sugar levels. This is insulin.

It was opened in 1920. Two surgeons from Canada - Charles Best and Frederick Banting studied the formation of this hormone in dogs. They injected the sick animal with the hormone that was formed in a healthy dog.

The result exceeded all expectations of scientists. After 2 hours in a sick dog, the level of the hormone was reduced. Further experiments were carried out on sick cows.

In January 1922, scientists ventured a human test by injecting a 14-year-old diabetic boy. It took a little time for the young man to feel better. This is how insulin was discovered. Today, this drug saves millions of lives around the world.

Today we talked about three great discoveries in medicine that were made by accident. This is not the last article on this interesting topic, go to my blog, I will delight you with new interesting news. Show the article to your friends, because they are also interested to know.

Often, scientific inventions pleasantly surprise and inspire optimism. Below are six inventions that may find wide application in the future and make life easier for patients. Read and wonder!

grown blood vessels

20 percent of people in the US die each year from cigarette smoking. The most commonly used smoking cessation methods are actually ineffective. Researchers at Harvard University found during a study that nicotine gums and patches did little to help heavy smokers with guardians quit smoking.

Nicotine gums and patches do little to help heavy smokers with a guardian to stop smoking.

Chrono Therapeutics, based in Hayward, California, USA, has proposed a device that combines the technologies of both a smartphone and a gadget. In its action, it is similar to a plaster, but its effectiveness is increased many times over. Smokers wear a small electronic device on their wrist that delivers nicotine into the body occasionally, but when it is most necessary for an experienced smoker. In the morning after waking up and after eating, the device monitors the “peak” moments for the smoker when the need for nicotine increases, and immediately responds to this. Since nicotine can interfere with sleep, the device turns off when the person falls asleep.

The electronic gadget is connected to the application in the smartphone. The smartphone uses gamification methods (game approaches that are widely used in computer games, for non-game processes) to help users track health improvements after quitting cigarettes, provide hints at each new stage, . Also, users help each other fight bad habits by uniting in a special network and exchanging proven recommendations. Chrono plans to explore the gadget further this year. Scientists hope that the product will appear on the market in 1.5 years.

Neuromodulation in the treatment of arthritis and Crohn's disease

Artificial control of nerve activity (neuromodulation) will help treat serious diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease. To achieve this, scientists plan to build a small electrical stimulator near the vagus nerve in the neck. The company, located in Valencia, California (USA), uses the discovery of neurosurgeon Kevin J. Tracy in its work. He claims that the body's vagus nerve helps reduce inflammation. In addition, the invention of the gadget was prompted by studies proving that people with inflammatory processes there is low activity of the vagus nerve.

SetPoint Medical is developing a device that uses electrical stimulation to treat inflammatory diseases such as. The first tests on volunteers of the SETPOINT invention will begin in the next 6-9 months, says the head of the company, Anthony Arnold.

Scientists hope the device will reduce the need for medicines, which have side effects. "It's for immune system", says the head of the company.

The chip will help you move with paralysis

Researchers in Ohio aim to help paralyzed people move their arms and legs using a computer chip. It connects the brain directly to the muscles. A device called NeuroLife has already helped the 24-year-old young man with a diagnosis of quadriplegia (four limbs) to move the hand. Thanks to the invention, the patient was able to hold a credit card in his hand and swipe it over the reader. In addition, now a young man can boast of playing the guitar in a video game.

A device called NeuroLife helped a man diagnosed with quadriplegia (quad paralysis) move his arm. The patient was able to hold a credit card in his hand and swipe it across the reader. He boasts of playing the guitar in a video game.

The chip transmits brain signals to software that recognizes what movements the person wants to make. The program recodes the signals before sending them over the wires in clothing with electrodes ().

The device is being developed by researchers at Battelle, a non-profit research organization, and at Ohio State University, USA. most challenging task was the development of software algorithms that decipher the patient's intentions through brain signals. The signals are then converted into electrical impulses and the patients' hands begin to move, says Herb Bresler, Battelle's senior research leader.

Robot surgeons

A surgical robot with a tiny mechanical wrist can make micro-incisions in tissue.

Researchers at Vanderbilt University are aiming to bring minimally invasive robot-assisted surgery to the medical field. He has a tiny mechanical arm for minimal tissue cutting.

The robot consists of a hand made of tiny concentric tubes, with a mechanical wrist at the end. The thickness of the wrist is less than 2mm, and it can rotate 90 degrees.

In the last decade, robotic surgeons have been increasingly used. A feature of laparoscopy is that the incisions are only 5 to 10 mm. These tiny incisions, compared to traditional surgery, allow the tissues to recover much faster and make healing far less painful. But this is not the limit! Razers can be even half as small. Dr. Robert Webster hopes that his technology will be widely used in acupuncture (microlaparoscopic) surgery where incisions of less than 3 mm are required.

Cancer screening

The most important thing in cancer treatment is early diagnosis of the disease. Unfortunately, many tumors go unnoticed until it's too late. Vadim Beckman, a biomedical engineer and professor at Northwestern University, is working on early cancer detection using a non-invasive diagnostic test.

Lung cancer is difficult to detect at an early stage without expensive x-rays. This type of diagnosis can be dangerous for low-risk patients. But for the Beckman test, which indicates that lung cancer has begun to develop, neither irradiation, nor obtaining an image of the lungs, nor the determination of tumor markers, which are far from always reliable, are needed. It's enough to take cell samples... from inside the patient's cheek. The test detects changes in cellular structure by using light to measure changes.

A special microscope developed by Beckman's laboratory makes the examination affordable (about $100) and fast. If the test result is positive, the patient will be advised to continue further testing. Preora Diagnostics, co-founder of Beckman, hopes to bring its first lung cancer screening test to market in 2017.

In the 21st century, scientists every year surprise with amazing discoveries that are hard to believe. Nanobots capable of killing cancer cells, turning brown eyes into blue, changing skin color, a 3D printer that prints body tissues (this is very useful in solving problems) - this is not a complete list of news from the world of medicine. Well, we are looking forward to new inventions!

Doctor biological sciences Y. PETRENKO.

A few years ago in Moscow state university The Faculty of Fundamental Medicine was opened, which trains doctors with broad knowledge in the natural disciplines: mathematics, physics, chemistry, molecular biology. But the question of how fundamental knowledge is necessary for a doctor continues to cause heated debate.

Science and life // Illustrations

Among the symbols of medicine depicted on the pediments of the library building of the Russian State Medical University are hope and healing.

wall painting in the foyer of the Russian State Medical University, which depicts the great doctors of the past, sitting in thought at one long table.

W. Gilbert (1544-1603), court physician to the Queen of England, naturalist who discovered terrestrial magnetism.

T. Jung (1773-1829), famous English physician and physicist, one of the creators of the wave theory of light.

J.-B. L. Foucault (1819-1868), French physician who was fond of physical research. With the help of a 67-meter pendulum, he proved the rotation of the Earth around its axis and made many discoveries in the field of optics and magnetism.

JR Mayer (1814-1878), German physician who established the basic principles of the law of conservation of energy.

G. Helmholtz (1821-1894), German doctor, studied physiological optics and acoustics, formulated the theory of free energy.

Is it necessary to teach physics to future doctors? Recently, this question has been of concern to many, and not only those who train professionals in the field of medicine. As usual, two extreme opinions exist and clash. Those who are in favor paint a gloomy picture, which was the result of a neglect of basic disciplines in education. Those who are "against" believe that a humanitarian approach should dominate in medicine and that a doctor should first of all be a psychologist.

Modern theoretical and practical medicine has achieved great success, and physical knowledge has greatly helped her in this. But in scientific articles and journalism, voices about the crisis of medicine in general and medical education in particular do not cease to sound. There are definitely facts testifying to the crisis - this is the appearance of "divine" healers, and the revival of exotic healing methods. Spells like "abracadabra" and amulets like the frog leg are back in use, as in prehistoric times. Neovitalism is gaining popularity, one of the founders of which, Hans Driesch, believed that the essence of life phenomena is entelechy (a kind of soul), acting outside of time and space, and that living things cannot be reduced to a set of physical and chemical phenomena. Recognition of entelechy as a vital force denies the importance of physical and chemical disciplines for medicine.

Many examples can be cited of how pseudo-scientific ideas replace and displace genuine scientific knowledge. Why is this happening? According to Francis Crick, a Nobel laureate and discoverer of the DNA structure, when a society becomes very rich, young people show a reluctance to work: they prefer to live an easy life and do trifles like astrology. This is true not only for rich countries.

As for the crisis in medicine, it can be overcome only by raising the level of fundamentality. It is generally believed that fundamentality is more high level generalizations of scientific ideas, in this case- ideas about human nature. But even on this path one can reach paradoxes, for example, to consider a person as a quantum object, completely abstracting from the physicochemical processes occurring in the body.

No one denies that the patient's belief in healing plays an important, sometimes even decisive role (recall the placebo effect). So what kind of doctor does the patient need? Confidently pronouncing: "You will be healthy" or pondering for a long time which medicine to choose in order to get the maximum effect and at the same time do no harm?

According to the memoirs of his contemporaries, the famous English scientist, thinker and physician Thomas Jung (1773-1829) often froze in indecision at the bedside of the patient, hesitated in establishing a diagnosis, often fell silent for a long time, plunging into himself. He honestly and painfully searched for the truth in the most complex and confusing subject, about which he wrote: "There is no science that surpasses medicine in complexity. It goes beyond the limits of the human mind."

From the point of view of psychology, the doctor-thinker does not correspond much to the image of the ideal doctor. He lacks courage, arrogance, peremptoryness, often characteristic of the ignorant. Probably, this is the nature of a person: having fallen ill, rely on the quick and energetic actions of the doctor, and not on reflection. But, as Goethe said, "there is nothing more terrible than active ignorance." Jung, as a doctor, did not acquire great popularity among patients, but among his colleagues his authority was high.

Know yourself and you will know the whole world. The first is medicine, the second is physics. Initially, the relationship between medicine and physics was close; it was not without reason that joint congresses of natural scientists and doctors took place until the beginning of the 20th century. And by the way, physics was largely created by doctors, and they were often prompted to research by questions that medicine posed.

Physicians-thinkers of antiquity were the first to think about the question of what heat is. They knew that a person's health is related to the warmth of his body. The great Galen (II century AD) introduced the concepts of "temperature" and "degree", which became fundamental for physics and other disciplines. So the doctors of antiquity laid the foundations of the science of heat and invented the first thermometers.

William Gilbert (1544-1603), physician to the Queen of England, studied the properties of magnets. He called the Earth a big magnet, proved it experimentally and came up with a model to describe the earth's magnetism.

Thomas Jung, who has already been mentioned, was a practicing physician, but he also made great discoveries in many areas of physics. He is rightfully considered, along with Fresnel, the creator of wave optics. By the way, it was Jung who discovered one of the visual defects - color blindness (the inability to distinguish between red and green colors). Ironically, this discovery immortalized in medicine the name of not the physician Jung, but the physicist Dalton, who was the first to discover this defect.

Julius Robert Mayer (1814-1878), who made a huge contribution to the discovery of the law of conservation of energy, served as a doctor on the Dutch ship Java. He treated sailors with bloodletting, which was considered at that time a remedy for all diseases. On this occasion, they even joked that the doctors released more human blood than it was spilled on the battlefields in the entire history of mankind. Meyer noted that when a ship is in the tropics, venous blood is almost as light as arterial blood during bloodletting (usually venous blood is darker). He suggested that the human body, like a steam engine, in the tropics, at high air temperatures, consumes less "fuel", and therefore emits less "smoke", so venous blood brightens. In addition, after thinking about the words of one navigator that during storms the water in the sea heats up, Meyer came to the conclusion that there must be a certain relationship between work and heat everywhere. He expressed the provisions that formed the basis of the law of conservation of energy.

The outstanding German scientist Hermann Helmholtz (1821-1894), also a doctor, independently of Mayer formulated the law of conservation of energy and expressed it in a modern mathematical form, which is still used by everyone who studies and uses physics. In addition, Helmholtz made great discoveries in the field of electromagnetic phenomena, thermodynamics, optics, acoustics, as well as in the physiology of vision, hearing, nervous and muscular systems, invented a number of important devices. Having received a medical education and being a professional physician, he tried to apply physics and mathematics to physiological research. At the age of 50, a professional doctor became a professor of physics, and in 1888 - director of the Physics and Mathematics Institute in Berlin.

The French physician Jean-Louis Poiseuille (1799-1869) experimentally studied the power of the heart as a pump that pumps blood, and investigated the laws of blood movement in the veins and capillaries. Summarizing the results obtained, he derived a formula that turned out to be extremely important for physics. For services to physics, the unit of dynamic viscosity, the poise, is named after him.

The picture showing the contribution of medicine to the development of physics looks quite convincing, but a few more strokes can be added to it. Any motorist has heard of a driveshaft that transmits rotary motion from different angles, but few people know that it was invented by the Italian doctor Gerolamo Cardano (1501-1576). The famous Foucault pendulum, which preserves the plane of oscillation, bears the name of the French scientist Jean-Bernard-Leon Foucault (1819-1868), a doctor by education. The famous Russian physician Ivan Mikhailovich Sechenov (1829-1905), whose name the Moscow State Medical Academy bears, studied physical chemistry and established an important physical and chemical law that describes the change in the solubility of gases in aquatic environment depending on the presence of electrolytes in it. This law is still being studied by students, and not only in medical schools.

Unlike doctors of the past, many medical students today simply do not understand why they are taught the sciences. I remember one story from my practice. Intense silence, sophomores of the Faculty of Fundamental Medicine of Moscow State University write a test. The topic is photobiology and its application in medicine. Note that photobiological approaches based on the physical and chemical principles of the action of light on matter are now recognized as the most promising for the treatment of oncological diseases. Ignorance of this section, its basics is a serious damage in medical education. The questions are not too complicated, everything is within the framework of the material of lectures and seminars. But the result is disappointing: almost half of the students received deuces. And for everyone who did not cope with the task, one thing is characteristic - they did not teach physics at school or taught it through their sleeves. For some, this subject inspires real horror. In a stack control works I got a piece of poetry. The student, unable to answer the questions, complained in poetic form that she had to cram not Latin (the eternal torment of medical students), but physics, and at the end she exclaimed: "What to do? After all, we are doctors, we cannot understand the formulas!" The young poetess, who in her poems called the control "doomsday", could not stand the test of physics and eventually transferred to the Faculty of Humanities.

When students, future doctors, operate on a rat, it would never occur to anyone to ask why this is necessary, although human and rat organisms differ quite a lot. Why future doctors need physics is not so obvious. But can a doctor who does not understand the basic physical laws, competently work with the most complex diagnostic equipment that modern clinics are "stuffed" with? By the way, many students, having overcome the first failures, begin to engage in biophysics with enthusiasm. At the end of the academic year, when such topics as "Molecular systems and their chaotic states", "New analytical principles of pH-metry" were studied, " physical nature chemical transformations of substances", "Antioxidant regulation of lipid peroxidation processes", sophomores wrote: "We discovered the fundamental laws that determine the basis of living and, possibly, the universe. They were discovered not on the basis of speculative theoretical constructions, but in a real objective experiment. It was hard for us, but interesting. "Perhaps among these guys there are future Fedorovs, Ilizarovs, Shumakovs.

“The best way to study something is to discover it yourself,” said the German physicist and writer Georg Lichtenberg. “What you were forced to discover yourself leaves a path in your mind that you can use again when the need arises.” This one effective principle learning is as old as the world. It underlies the "Socratic method" and is called the principle of active learning. It is on this principle that the teaching of biophysics at the Faculty of Fundamental Medicine is built.

Fundamentality for medicine is the key to its current viability and future development. It is possible to truly achieve the goal by considering the body as a system of systems and following the path of a more in-depth understanding of its physico-chemical understanding. What about medical education? The answer is clear: to increase the level of knowledge of students in the field of physics and chemistry. In 1992, the Faculty of Fundamental Medicine was established at Moscow State University. The goal was not only to return medicine to the university, but also, without reducing the quality of medical training, to sharply strengthen the natural-scientific knowledge base of future doctors. Such a task requires intensive work of both teachers and students. Students are expected to consciously choose fundamental medicine over conventional medicine.

Even earlier, a serious attempt in this direction was the creation of a medical-biological faculty at the Russian State Medical University. For 30 years of work of the faculty prepared big number medical specialists: biophysicists, biochemists and cybernetics. But the problem of this faculty is that until now its graduates could only engage in medical scientific research, not having the right to treat patients. Now this problem is being solved - at the Russian State Medical University, together with the Institute for Advanced Training of Doctors, an educational and scientific complex has been created, which allows senior students to undergo additional medical training.

Medical Physics Podkolzina Vera Alexandrovna

1. Medical physics. Short story

Medical physics is the science of a system that consists of physical devices and radiation, medical and diagnostic devices and technologies.

The goal of medical physics is to study these systems for the prevention and diagnosis of diseases, as well as the treatment of patients using the methods and means of physics, mathematics and technology. The nature of diseases and the mechanism of recovery in many cases have a biophysical explanation.

Medical physicists are directly involved in the treatment and diagnostic process, combining physical and medical knowledge, sharing responsibility for the patient with the doctor.

The development of medicine and physics have always been closely intertwined. Since ancient times, medicine has used medicinal purposes physical factors, such as heat, cold, sound, light, various mechanical influences (Hippocrates, Avicenna, etc.).

The first medical physicist was Leonardo da Vinci (five centuries ago), who conducted research on the mechanics of movement of the human body. Medicine and physics began to interact most fruitfully from the end of the 18th - beginning of the 19th centuries, when electricity and electromagnetic waves were discovered, that is, with the advent of the era of electricity.

Let's name a few names of the great scientists who made major discoveries in different eras.

The end of the 19th - the middle of the 20th centuries. associated with the discovery of x-rays, radioactivity, theories of the structure of the atom, electromagnetic radiation. These discoveries are associated with the names of V.K. Roentgen, A. Becquerel,

M. Skladovskoy-Curie, D. Thomson, M. Planck, N. Bohr, A. Einstein, E. Rutherford. Medical physics really began to establish itself as an independent science and profession only in the second half of the 20th century. with the advent of the atomic age. In medicine, radiodiagnostic gamma devices, electronic and proton accelerators, radiodiagnostic gamma cameras, X-ray computed tomographs and others, hyperthermia and magnetotherapy, laser, ultrasound and other medical-physical technologies and devices have become widely used. Medical physics has many sections and names: medical radiation physics, clinical physics, oncological physics, therapeutic and diagnostic physics.

by the most important event in the field of medical examination can be considered the creation of computed tomography, which expanded the study of almost all organs and systems human body. OCT has been installed in clinics around the world, and a large number of physicists, engineers and doctors worked in the field of improving technology and methods of bringing it almost to the limits of the possible. The development of radionuclide diagnostics is a combination of radiopharmaceutical methods and physical recording methods ionizing radiation. Positron emission tomography imaging was invented in 1951 and published in the work of L. Renn.