...that patients in early Muslim societies might take pills, pastilles, syrups and powders, undergo cataract surgery or have a cast put on a broken leg?
 

...that in 1924, a manuscript revealed that a forgotten 13th-century Arab scholar had correctly explained a crucial aspect of how our blood moves around the body?
 

...that key medical works from the 9th century onwards reached a worldwide audience because Christian, Jewish and Muslim scholars were keen to learn from each other and from other civilisations?

• Find out about physician and scholar Ibn Sina, who advised against splinting a fractured limb straight away, but recommended waiting until five days later – a procedure now universally adopted
   

• Hear how translations of medical books by Ibn Sina and many others influenced European doctors for centuries after they were written
   

• See examples of the surgical tools used a thousand years ago, which look remarkably similar to those we still use today
   

• Explore how inoculation, known to ancient civilisations in the Middle East and Africa, became a life-saving practice all around the world
   

• Find out how an 11th-century scholar from Iraq invented and made a hollow needle for removing cataracts
   

• Meet Al-Zahrawi, a 10th-century surgeon, in our film, and hear about how he was the first person to use catgut systematically to stitch internal incisions
   

• Discover The Book of Water, a nine-hundred-page book thought to be the first alphabetical classification of medical terms
   

• Hear the story of 13th-century doctor Ibn al-Nafis, who was the first to explicitly state that the blood moves from the heart, transits through the lungs to mix with air and returns to the heart
   

• Explore early hospitals, with their wards for men and women, running water, teaching spaces and mental health facilities.