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Report respecting the Statistical Researches of Dr Civiale on 

 Calcttlous Affections^ made to the Academie des Sciences, by 

 Messrs Poison, Dulong, Lauuey and Double. October 

 5. 1835. 



The report of these able men to the learned Academy on this 

 important subject cannot be regarded with indifference by any of 

 our readers, and we shall therefore now present them with such 

 an abridgment as shall be free from professional technicalities, and 

 will be generally interesting, ''J 



Calculous diseases, the Commissioners remark, are amongst 

 the most intolerable that harass the human race, and more espe* 

 cially the life of maji. Independent of the pains and dangers 

 of the maladyj and its cure, there are besides certain moral sen- 

 sations, and grievous mental trials, which are inseparable from 

 it, and which greatly increase the wretchedness of the sufferer. 

 The work of M. Civiale on this subject, of which we have now 

 to give an account, applies the method of calculation to many 

 of the questions involved in its discussion. 



As elements of his researches, M. Civiale has collected, with 

 infinite trouble and care, a great number of tables drawn up in 

 the midst of different populations, in large towns, and from the 

 records of the greatest hospitals in Europe. The analysis of these 

 tables has supplied him with the means of confirming or cor- 

 recting, by the help of numerical data, many of the general pa- 

 thological results deduced from the most precise clinical obser- 

 vation. We shall state some of these to the Academy, that it may 

 the better appreciate the important labours of M. Civiale. 



Up to the present time, it has been a prevailing opinion, that, 

 in certain families, the parents communicate to their children a 

 predisposition to this class of complaints; in a word, that it was 

 hereditary/. Now, upon this point, it is true that a very great 

 number of facts attest that the children of such parents have, in 

 their turn, been attacked by stone; but the facts in this list are 

 met with yet more numerous ones in the opposite category. In 

 the former case, too, there is this additional consideration, that 

 the disease has attacked i!ic children when they were placed in 



