The CNN article is fun to read and shows many Americans and Europeans an important perspectives on the development of the West over a millennia--that has been described as a dark era by traditional historians too often. CNN's article also has a nice link to the Muslim Heritage site, which has also been working for several decades to clean up the image of Islam and Sciences in the Western World.
On the other hand, the Incas, Mayans, Indian, Southeast Asian, and Chinese civlizations have a right to criticize the idea that surgery was first performed at the end of the first millennia A.D. Each of these distant corners of the globe have shown evidence of even carrying out brain surgery long before the Muslims tried their hand at similar surgery. However, the idea of using cat-gut to do stitching was certainly brought first to the West during the Golden Islamic era.
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