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IV. " On the Disintegration of Urinary Calculi by the Lateral 

 Disruptive Force of the Electrical Discharge." By GEORGE 

 ROBINSON, M.D., Licentiate of the Royal College of Phy- 

 sicians of London, and Lecturer on Medicine in the New- 

 castle-upon-Tyne College of Practical Science. Commu- 

 nicated by Dr. SHARPEY, Sec. R.S. Received June 13th, 

 1854. 



The great and diversified powers of electricity have long suggested 

 the possibility of its being employed as a means of effecting the de- 

 struction of calculi in the human bladder, and thus obviating the 

 necessity for the painful and dangerous operation of lithotomy. 

 But the attempts hitherto made in this direction have contemplated 

 the solution of the stone through electrolytic action rather than its 

 disintegration by the mechanical force of the electrical discharge. 

 A moment's reflection will however suffice to convince us that the 

 force which shatters a steeple or cleaves an oak, is also capable of 

 reducing to fragments the largest urinary concretion. Nor can I 

 imagine any other than the following sources of objection to the prac- 

 ticability of employing this force for the purpose of breaking down 

 vesical calculi in situ, namely, 1 . the danger to the living structures 

 from the necessity of using a powerful discharge ; 2. the difficulty of 

 conveying the force to the required spot, or in other words, causing 

 the discharge to pass through the calculus. The first objection is in 

 a great measure met by the fact of our being enabled to regulate with 

 the utmost precision the degree of intensity of the discharge, and it 

 would be almost entirely removed were it possible to apply the dis- 

 ruptive force of electricity without any portion of the body being 

 included within the circuit traversed by the electrical current. The 

 second objection rests upon the mechanical difficulty of bringing the 

 calculus within the direct route of the electrical discharge, but would 

 scarcely apply were it demonstrated that the disruptive effects of 

 electricity can be obtained without any such direct transmission of 

 the current. 



My own attention was some years since directed to the subject 

 by reading an account of the following experiment first performed 

 by Mr. Crosse. " Two platinum wires one-thirtieth of an inch in 



VOL. VII. L 



