About
The film and this site
How the film was made
The film was made in October 2026. Its research was written up in five dossiers, one for each era, in which every claim carries a grade: verified, where two reliable sources agree or a primary source was read; probable, where one reliable source was read; disputed, where the sources disagree and both versions are kept; and unverified, where a statement rests on background knowledge that was not checked, which keeps it off the screen. The screenplay carries a source and confidence note under its lines.
An independent fact-check of the screenplay and the on-screen text followed, with listening and viewing reviews of the cut and two rounds of notes from the commissioning surgeon. The decisions on each disputed point are kept with the research. The quoted voices speak only words the person wrote or is documented as saying.
How this site was made
Every claim here comes from that research and carries its grade and its sources. Verified claims are shown plain; probable claims are tagged; disputed claims show both versions, each with its own sources. Material graded unverified is not published. Where the screenplay and the research disagree, the site follows the screenplay and the disagreement is logged for the editors. The pages are generated from data, so a correction made once appears everywhere the claim is used.
This site is history, not clinical advice.
Corrections
If you find an error, write to [CONTACT_EMAIL] with the page, the claim, and the source that contradicts it. Each report is checked against the cited source and the research behind the film. Confirmed errors are corrected in the next release of the site; a dead link is never removed, but marked and paired with an archived copy where one exists.
Licence
This site's own text is published under [SITE_TEXT_LICENCE]. The licence does not cover the film, its stills, or quotations, which keep their own status.
Credits
As they appear at the end of the film.
THE GLASS AND THE STONE
A History of Urology
Commissioned by
Lee C. Zhao
Research, screenplay, animation and score
Claude (Anthropic) and a team of Claude agents
With help from other machines
Grok · wrote the first prompt
Gemini · voices, fact-check, and listening and viewing reviews
ChatGPT · second-round critique
Voices
Narrator and nineteen character voices designed with Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS
Quoted voices speak documented words: public-domain translations,
the film’s own translations (Bozzini, Wöhler, the Vienna file),
and one recollection (Donker, as told by Patrick Walsh)
Falstaff and the Page are Shakespeare’s
Music and sound
Composed and rendered in code
Orchestral samples: VS Chamber Orchestra Community Edition (Versilian Studios, CC0)
Upright piano sampled by Simon Dalzell · GeneralUser GS SoundFont by S. Christian Collins
“Frère Jacques”: traditional
Principal sources and translations
Galen, On the Natural Faculties, tr. A. J. Brock (1916)
Celsus, De Medicina, tr. W. G. Spencer · Hippocratic writings, tr. F. Adams (1849)
Sushruta Samhita, tr. K. L. Bhishagratna (1907–1916)
T. Brian, The Pisse-Prophet (1637) · T. Willis (1685) · R. Bright (1827)
W. Cheselden (1741) · S. Pepys, Diary · B. Franklin, letter of 1752
H. J. Bigelow (1878) · A. Desormeaux, tr. R. P. Hunt (1867) · H. Morris (1904)
E. Riches, The history of lithotomy and lithotrity (1967)
G. Elliot Smith (1926), via H. A. Waldron (2000) · M. A. Ruffer, BMJ (1910)
W. H. S. Jones (1923) · L. Edelstein (1943) · E. H. Kass (1956–57)
A. R. Cushny (1917) · Lepor et al. (1985) · Yaxley et al. (2016)
T. Willis, translated from his Latin (1685)
Walsh and Donker (1982) · Stamey et al. (1987) · Wolfe et al. (2012) · Hilt et al. (2014)
EAU History Office · BAUS Virtual Museum · James Lind Library · Founders Online
Typefaces
IM Fell · Cinzel · Cormorant · EB Garamond · GFS Didot · Playfair Display
Limelight · Poiret One · Marcellus · UnifrakturMaguntia · Amiri · Noto · IBM Plex Mono
Facts were checked against primary sources where they could be reached.
Where the record is uncertain, the film says so.
Look again.