LIT. } 170 
inscrutable processes of the living animal system, 
- imaginable or inconceivable, by which this, to us 
occult process, might be accomplished, without 
the aid of any direct short cut from the stomach 
to the bladder. Whatever communication may 
be there, other than what the eager and gifted 
eye and adroit knife of the anatomist have brought 
to light-—must be minute indeed. But if it . 
were possible to be, and were as large as the 
Thames tunnel, what would that avail? Is 
it that it shall permit a passage, scot-free of toll 
or mulct or diminution, of stone-solvents on their 
way to the bladder to break up and root out the 
lithic pest? Does Dr. Chapman, who enlists this 
argument to sustain his position that ‘enough is — 
ascertained, in relation to lithontriptics, to war- 
rant us to persevere in our trials, as well with 
those which we already have, as with new sub- 
stances,”* forget what he has himself noticed, 
two pages preceding, ‘that these solvents have. 
been injected directly into the bladder through the 
urethra,” where * it is contended they ought to act 
on the stone and gradually dissolve it:” and that 
**he does not perceive why they should not. thongh — 
the few attempts which have been made, afford us 
litile encouragement 2” 
__As to his insinuation, that the want of success 
in these experiments might ‘tbe owing to their not 
having been conducted with all the care which the 
case requires,” and his assertion that * to succeed 
in such experiments, much skill and perseverance 
is demanded.” [think it may very fairly be said, 
that neither is justified by fact nor probability. 
There is no difficulty in throwing by forcible in- 
jection, tliese solutions of lithic solvents into the 
bladder—but allowing that there was, surely 
* Therspeuties—Lithonthriptics—or Antilithi 
