553 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1 SQS. 



tions on the motions of diseases, which I could the better do, as I had some in 

 my family visited with agues. Here I found that the tumult of the fits gene- 

 rally lasted all the tiding time, and then went off in gentle kindly sweats in the 

 ebbs. I went on then to take notice of the sex res non naturales, and altera- 

 tions of the weather, and such accounts as I could meet with of earthquakes 

 and other things ; and I have yet met nothing to prevent me from laying down 

 this as a maxim, that motion, vigour, action, strength, &c. appear most, and 

 do best, in the tiding senaries, and that rest, relaxation, decay, dissolution, 

 belong to the ebbing senaries. 



Accounl of a Stone of an extraordinary Size, spontaneously voided through the 

 Urethra by a JVoman in Dublin. By Dr. Mullineux. N° 202, p. 81 7. 



Women are made by nature of a more nice composition, and weaklier frame 

 than men, and are therefore liable to many infirmities that men are not the 

 least subject to. Yet in one of the most painful that afflicts the body, the 

 stone in the bladder, they have much the advantage, and are more rarely 

 troubled with it than men. For among the two vast collections of stones, 

 which amount at least to several thousands, kept together in the hospitals at 

 Paris, I'Hotel Dieu, and la Charite, cut out only of such as come thither to be 

 cured, not one in a hundred, I might safely say more, is taken out of a woman. 

 This remarkable difference must proceed from the urinary passage in this sex, 

 being shorter, larger, and more apt to dilate ; so that for the most part, when 

 gravel, or a sort of viscous clayey matter, which I take to be the chief cause of 

 the generation of the stone, falls into the bladder, it is suddenly and easy dis- 

 charged, before it can cohere together and form a stone of any large bulk ; 

 which cannot so frequently happen in men, by reason of the narrowness, 

 crookedness, and length of the passage of the urethra. 



However it sometimes happens, that even in women, either from a more de- 

 pending, or less elevated posture than usual, in their bladder, or that the matter 

 forming the stone adheres to some part of its membranes, so that it cannot fall 

 in the urinary passage, till its own size or weight forces it thither, stones of a 

 very considerable bulk are generated. Of this we have lately had here in Dublin 

 a very remarkable example : one Margaret Plunket, alias Weldon, about 60 

 years of age, on May 29, 1691, voided through the urinary passage, by the 

 help of nature alone, without the use of remedies, or any forcible means what- 

 ever, a stone of the shape of fig. 9, pi. 12, somewhat resembling a hard pear, 

 a little pressed or flatted. 



Its circumference measured the longest way is 7-^ inches ; round about the 

 thickest part 54 inches ; its weight at present, according to Troy pound, §ii. 



