Alice Roberts: Our Hospital Through Time

Professor Alice Roberts goes behind the scenes at St Bartholomew's Hospital. She visits its catheterisation laboratories, where cardiologists save the lives of thousands of heart patients a year. Alice then uses a manual for surgery from the 1600s.

Alice uncovers St Barts' centuries of medical innovation, from a high-tech, million pound surgical robot to a brutal 17th-century bladder stone operation. Alice then investigates how they kept the hospital clean in the 1800s.

Alice Roberts investigates how Barts came perilously close to collapse in the 1500s. She takes a look at a common Victorian treatment for the sick - bloodletting with leeches, and then follows the present day work of a world-renowned heart surgeon.

Alice follows a cancer patient's treatment using a special high-dose chemotherapy developed at Barts. She then uncovers pioneering plastic surgery and stories of courage and innovation during the Great Plague and World War I.