VOL. III.J PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 287 



befel her, been a voider of abundance of red gravel, and particularly about three 

 years after she took them, she voided a considerable reddish stone. When I 

 asked her about the manner of affecting her body at the coming forth ? She 

 answered, it was much like a common fit of the stone, only it held her longer 

 (lasting some weeks) bowed her sadly forward, (as a stone often does in the 

 ureters,) provoked to vomitings, and particularly she felt it crowd lower and 

 lower from the kidney to the bladder in the left ureter. Asking her farther 

 whether she was sure it came by the passage of urine and not by stool, she 

 assured me she was not mistaken in that. And indeed the gravelly coat which 

 the bullet has shows sufficiently whereabout it was lodged. Inquiring also 

 whether the other bullet was come from her? She said no; for aught she knew 

 it was still in her body. And as to her state since this evacuation, she said, 

 that she has had ever since stone-colic pains, but none in so high a degree as 

 before.* 



This is the plain relation of the matter of fact. The main use I would make 

 of the instance (if it be worth mentioning) is to strengthen a conjecture I have 

 had a long time, of some other passage from the stomach to the bladder, besides 

 what anatomists have hitherto given accounts of. For that this bullet never 

 came at the bladder through the veins, arteries, lymphatics, &c. (the only 

 vessels that can be charged with it) is, I think, beyond dispute. If it shall be 

 said that nature, when put to shifts, finds out strange conveyances to rid the 

 body of what is extraneous and offensive to it, I readily grant it, because many 

 instances are known making that good ; yet I think it not so pertinently urged, 

 forasmuch as some other instances seem to side with it, which cannot be taken 

 off by the same evasion ; viz. Many do find that drinking four or five glasses of 

 rhenish (for instance), within less than a quarter of an hour they shall have a 

 strong inclination to make water, especially if the body has been agitated. Now 

 that it should pass through the lacteals, veins, heart and arteries, and be strained 

 from the blood in so short a time, is to me scarce conceivable. 



But surely this shorter passage (wherever it is) is as natural as that by which 

 it should have gone, had it staid longer in the body : Not to say how little it 

 savours of the rankness of the kidney, and how much it resembles that which 

 it was before it was taken into the body.-^ And methinks the conveyance of 



* If the bullet in this case was really voided from the urethra, it must have made its way through 

 the coats of the intestinal canal (in some part of the lower tract thereof;) and, insinuating itself over 

 the uterus, have penetrated into the bladder. It is highly improbable that it should get from the 

 intestines into either of the kidnies, and from thence to the bladder. 



f This conjecture of a short road for fluids to tlie urinary bladder (without passing through the 

 kidnies) although it has met with advocates among some celebrated modem physiologists, is not 

 countenanced by anatomical researches. 



