390 Proceedings of the Royal Institution. 



rd A^:)t; oviiri iiu Xi May \Ath. 



bh^M'iMoTVion LUhotrity, illustrated by Experiments^ referring 

 more especially to the Improvements introduced by Gruithuisen^ 

 Civiaky Le Roy, and Huerteloup. "^*^ 



Mr. Gilbert Burnett, who introduced this subject to the attention of 

 the members, stated that he should purposely avoid (as far as such 

 neutrality was practicable) entering at all into the controversy which 

 has been, and still is carrying on, between several claimants, with 

 respect to the original discovery of the process, and the invention of 

 its several parts, and that his observations would be chiefly con- 

 fined to points of more essential importance, viz. the operation itself, 

 and the instruments with which it can be most effectually and most 

 easily performed. Even in France, the country where most has been 

 done, and the chief improvements made, much uncertainty prevails 

 as to the just appropriation of the several stages of discovery which 

 have led to the successive amelioration, and almost the perfection of 

 the lithotritic process. Gruithuisen, Elderton, and Lukin, would 

 each appear to have done something, though much less than Civiale, 

 Le Roy, and Huerteloup ; but (added he) it is a far more grateful 

 task to shew the results of their united labours as colleagued in the 

 advancement of lithotrity, than to view them as rivals, contending 

 for the possession of the separate parts of that which, as a whole, 

 sheds glory on modern surgery, but which, if divided, would be so 

 imperfect as to add little to the reputation of either. 



It is a matter of notoriety, that the female urethra may be so far 

 dilated as to allow the extraction of stones of considerable size from 

 the bladder ; and, in the male, small calculi are sometimes voided 

 through the natural passage, or even have been occasionally extracted 

 by the means of lengthened forceps. What could formerly be done 

 only in a few cases, and those where the stones were small, can now 

 be effected in the majority of instances, and even when the stones 

 are large ; for lithotrity is an operation by which calculi of almost 

 any size, at least to that of 24 lines in diameter, may be reduced to 

 powder, or to fragments so small that they can be washed out of the 

 bladder by injections, or carried away in the ordinary fluxus urinae. '^ 



The chief principles of lithotrity, as is often the case with modeni 



