Louis starts his physiotherapy story in the 1970s. The first 3 sections describe who and what were influencing manual therapy in the 1980s. Louis questions the lack of pain discussion and understanding.

Sections 1-9 discuss; the dorsal horn, memory biology, placebo, stress, nociceptive pain mechanisms, the sympathetic nervous system, healing and adaptation.

Section 10 describes how Louis developed The Mature Organism Model ( MOM) which is now used worldwide to teach physiotherapists about input/output mechanisms and processing changes.

Book one is an expansion of the first half of Louis' 2 day lecture programme The Clinical Biology of Aches and Pains. A course Louis first taught in Adelaide in 1993 and continued to teach until he had to stop lecturing in 2007.