MORBID CONCRETIONS. 



PART III. 



OF MORBID CONCRETIONS. 



SOLID bodies are apt to be deposited in various cavities, both 

 of the human body and of the inferior animals. These occasion 

 uneasiness frequently terminating in disease and death. These 

 concretions, so far as they have been investigated by chemists, may 

 be arranged under the six following heads : 



1. Urinary calculi. 4. Biliary concretions. 



2. Gouty concretions. 5. Ossifications. 



3. Salivary concretions. 6. Intestinal concretions. 

 These will be treated of successively in the six following chap- 

 ters. 



CHAPTER I. 



OF URINARY CALCULI. 



IT is well known that concretions not unfrequently form in 

 the kidneys or bladder, and occasion one of the most dismal dis- 

 eases to which the human species is liable. 



These concretions were distinguished by the name of calculi, 

 from a supposition that they are of a stony nature. Their ex- 

 istence must have been known from the very commencement of 

 medical science. The mode of extracting them by an operation 

 was known to the ancients, and is described by Celsus. Che- 

 mistry had no sooner made its way into medicine than it began to 

 exercise its ingenuity on the urinary calculi ; and various theo- 

 ries of their nature and origin were given. According to Pa- 

 racelsus, who distinguished them by the name of duelech, they 

 were intermediate between tartar and stone, * or were composed 

 of a mucilaginous tartar that floated in the blood-vessels. In 

 his fourth tract, De Elemento Aqua, cap. 8, he gives cha- 

 racters of duelech ; but they differ so much from those of urinary 

 calculi that it is not worth while to transcribe them. The school- 



* De Morbis Tartareis, cap. 11. 



