Treatment of Calculous Disorders. 71 



of the calculus, if we find it composed of uric acid, those means 

 must be adopted that I have endeavoured to explain, in speaking 

 of uric sand. (Page 204, Vol. VI. of this Journal.) Carefully ob- 

 serving the importance of pursuing the alcaline system to a 

 certain extent only, and not erroneously persevering in it as a 

 preventive, after the desired effect of removing its excess in the 

 urine has been attained. The dull pain that remains in the 

 region of the kidney, after the formation or passage of a small 

 calculus, is not, as far as my experience goes, to be considered 

 as symptomatic of the lodgment of calculous matter ; it is gene- 

 rally relieved by cold bathing, and, in more than one case, I 

 have observed electricity of considerable service ; when, how- 

 ever, it is attended by nausea, sickness, shivering, and pain or 

 numbness of the thigh, the retention of calculous matter in the 

 kidney may be justly feared, and in this species of calculus a 

 relapse is always to be apprehended. 



It is a difficult point to determine the particular treatment 

 applicable to oxalic calculi, but it fortunately happens that they 

 very seldom occur ; and as oxalic sand is not voided at the time 

 of their formation, we are not able to judge of the cause of the 

 mischief, till the effect has become evident. I have memoranda 

 of nine cases of the voiding of oxalic calculi, and in one only has 

 there been a second attack, after an interval of two years ; in 

 one instance a second stone was voided three days after the 

 first, but it had probably lodged in the bladder, and was of coeval 

 formation with that which first passed. 



Two instances of cystic oxide voided as a kidney calculus, 

 have come under my own observation, and I have neither seen, 

 nor heard of any other. In one, the calculus was voided by a 

 labourer, and was sent to me with no particulars of the case, 

 nor have I since been able to obtain them. In the other, several 

 of those calculi, varying in size from a pin's head to that of a 

 ()ea, had been voided at different times during a period of thirty 

 years, by a gentleman forty years of age ; he had been subject 

 from the age of six or seven years to pain in the region of the 

 loins, not confined to any particular spot, and seldom of any 

 acuteness, or such as to prevent his ordinary occupations, which 



