This episode looks at Barts' extraordinary archive, a contemporary cardiac emergency, the grisly history of x-rays, and a gruesome 1600s gangrenous limb amputation.
Alice uncovers Barts' centuries of medical innovation, from a high-tech, million pound surgical robot to a brutal 17th-century bladder stone operation. Plus, the role of nurses at Barts over the years.
Alice steps back to Victorian times to discover a common treatment of bloodletting with leeches, learns that Beadles were about in the 1500s, and follows the present day work of a world-renowned heart surgeon.
Alice follows a cancer patient's treatment, while uncovering pioneering plastic surgery and stories of courage, innovation and care during the Great Plague and World War I.
As a surgeon performs open-heart surgery, a procedure rooted in centuries of anatomical study, Alice investigates the murky world of body snatchers. Plus, the perilous history of anesthesia.
Alice explores the hospital's past - from Barts' most famous doctor, William Harvey, to hospital food over the centuries. And a patient's treatment for a rare cancer temporarily makes him radioactive.
