A companion to the film

The Glass and the Stone A History of Urology

Title screen in gold capitals reading The Glass and the Stone, with A History of Urology beneath, below an amber stone and a flask of yellow liquid.

The film will play here when it is published ([VIDEO_URL]). Each Watch link on this site will then open it at the moment it names.

1:07:00 · twelve chapters · English captions · Full transcript

In a glass jar in a London museum there once sat a stone. It had grown in the bladder of a boy buried in Upper Egypt more than five thousand years ago. The film starts there and follows two obsessions from that grave to the operating robot: the stone, and how to get it out and at what cost; and the glass, the wish to see inside a living body and know what is happening there. For most of that history physicians were certain of things that were not so. The film follows the few who doubted and went to look.

A thing repeated is not a thing proven.