The Kitāb al-Taṣrīf (Arabic: كتاب التصريف لمن عجز عن التأليف, lit.

It contains information about a wide variety of illnesses, injuries, medical conditions, treatments, and surgical procedures.

[citation needed] The work covers a broad range of medical topics, including on surgery, medicine, orthopaedics, ophthalmology, pharmacology, nutrition, dentistry, childbirth, and pathology.

[4] In the beginning of his book, al-Zahrawi states that the reason for writing this treatise was the degree of underdevelopment surgery had reached in the Islamic world, and the low status it was held by the physicians at the time.

"Innovative surgical techniques discussed by al-Zahrawi in the volume include crushing bladder stones with a sort of lithotrite he called "michaab",[6] and using forceps for extracting a dead fetus.