36 DISEASES CLASS I. 1. 3. 10, 



cus suspended in it; but will also diminish the stone already 

 formed, by softening, and washing away its surface. To this 

 must be added cool dress, and cool bed-clothes, as directed above 

 in the calculus renis. 



When the stone is pushed against or into the neck of the blad- 

 der, great pain is produced; this may sometimes be relieved by the 

 introduction of a bougie to push the stone back into the fundus of 

 the bladder. Sometimes by change of posture, or by an opiate 

 either taken into the stomach, or by a clyster. 



A dram of sal soda, or of salt of tartar, dissolved in a pint of 

 water, and well saturated with carbonic acid (fixed air) by means 

 of Dr. Nooth's glass apparatus, and drunk every day, or twice a 

 day, is the most efficacious internal medicine yet discovered, 

 which can be easily taken without any general injury to the con- 

 stitution. An aerated alkaline water of this kind is sold under 

 the name of factitious Seltzer water, by J. Schweppe, at No. 8, 

 KingVstreet, Holborn, London; which I am told is better pre- 

 pared than can be easily done in the usual glass vessels, probably 

 by employing a greater pressure in wooden ones. 



A curious account is given in a letter to Sir John Sinclair from 

 Colonel Martin; who asserts, that, after using bougies and in- 

 jections into the bladder, the passage of the urethra became less 

 sensible to pain, arid he was enabled to introduce small files (I 

 suppose with their backs smooth;) and that by these he gradu- 

 ally filed away the stone, as it lay in the neck of the bladder. 

 When the stone did not properly present itself, he introduced 

 warm water by injection into the bladder, and thus, by again en- 

 deavouring to discharge it, brought forward the stone to the neck 

 of it He used the file three times in twenty-four hours from 

 April till October. Medical Journal, No. II. p. 121. If this 

 process should be again attempted, perhaps the file might be intro- 

 duced through a flexible canula, with a metallic hood at the in- 

 ternal end of the canula to cover the back of the file, so as to 

 prevent the friction of it against the urethra, or neck of the blad- 

 der. If the urethra, by frequent trials, should become so insen- 

 sible as to admit easily the frequent introduction of a metallic 

 canula, might not two fine steel wires properly tempered be join- 

 ed at one end by a hinge, and thus introduced through the canula 

 into the bladder; and when protruded beyond the extremity 

 of the canula, they might open by their elasticity so as to receive 

 the stone, and confine it against the end of the canula, by re- 

 tracting them? The proper direction of the wire-springs, so as 

 to open when they are pushed through the canula, must be pre- 

 viously given them. If this could be managed, a small file or 

 borer might at the same time be introduced through the canula, 



