For pulmonary ailments, certain mediaeval physicians had a useful medical textbook on hand offering detailed information remarkably similar to those a modern doctor might use today. One of the fathers of medicine, the great Persian scholar Avicenna left a wealth of information in his many works. Iranian academics dust off one of these in an article published today in the SAGE journal Therapeutic Advances in Respiratory Disease, sharing in English details of Avicenna's work that still fascinate both physicians and historians of medicine alike.