HENRY JACOB BIGELOW. 347 



(especially by devices which prevent the blades from clogging or be- 

 coming impacted with crushed material,) of a size much larger than 

 had before been used. This permitted the attack of calculi exceeding 

 in dimensions the limits previously thought allowable by crushing 

 alone, i. e. without evacuation. 



" Dr. Bigelow also constructed thin silver tubes, easy to be intro- 

 duced, notwithstanding their large size (27-31 Charriere), through 

 which evacuation of the crushed stone was made practicable by means 

 of an elastic exhausting bulb of sufficient suction power to draw out 

 the fragments previously comminuted to a size enabling them to 

 enter and pass through the tube, — pulverization being no longer 

 essential. 



" Dr. Bigelow established the fact that with these instruments a 

 sitting — two minutes having been, up to that time, assigned by Sir 

 Henry Thompson as the proper average duration — could be pro- 

 longed, with the aid of anaesthesia, one to two hours, harmlessly for 

 the patient and without detriment to the bladder. ' Lithotrity with 

 a single sitting ' has been shown to have a mortality less than that 

 of ' Lithotrity with many sittings,' and it has entirely superseded 

 the latter. 



" The operation of Litholapaxy, at first supposed applicable only to 

 adults, has been within the last few years extended in its use to chil- 

 dren from two years of age upwards, with great success. They have 

 never been supposed to come within the scope of old-fashioned litho- 

 trity. This practice, adopted originally in India (Lihore), has latterly 

 been introduced in England and America. 



" Dr. Bigelow's invention may justly be said to have acquired a 

 world-wide reputation." 



I add a few words to this description by Dr. Hodges. He was led 

 to think that a principal source of failure in that operation was the irri- 

 tating effect of the fragments of stone allowed to remain in the bladder, 

 which left it inflamed and sensitive, not in condition to be the subject 

 of a second or third operation. If the bladder could be completely 

 cleared at one sitting, this danger could be avoided. To effect this 

 object, he designed new instruments, or modified such as were in use, 

 so as to make them serve his purpose. He spared no pains in per- 

 fecting his apparatus. It is not to be supposed that his surgical inno- 

 vations were at once accepted without question or opposition. The 

 end of it all was, that his principal rival in the treatment of calculus, 

 Sir Henry Thompson, became a convert to Dr. Bigelow's mode of 

 dealing with stone in the bladder, and that this new m'^thod of opera- 



