\OL. XVII.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 553 



311, 9i, gr. 6, for it has lost considerably both of its first bulk, and weight by 

 many little fragments breaking off from the smaller end A, where it is much 

 softer, smoother, whiter, its parts more porous, and so incoherent, that the 

 least force severs them : whereas the larger end, as far as the dotted line across, 

 is of a very difl^erent texture, much more close and compact, covered with a 

 yellowish shining crust, rough, granulated, and as hard as the best Portland 

 stone. 



It appears that some stones, from their way of generation, must of necessity 

 remain fixed in the bladder; being closely joined and united to the very substance 

 of its membrane, of which sort there are several examples recorded by Schenkius, 

 and other collectors of observations: and I am persuaded this stone I am now 

 describing may be reckoned among them ; for about the larger end, there still 

 closely adheres several thin films and carneous filaments, which manifestly shovV 

 it was formerly united by this part to the membranous substance of the bladder, 

 and that lately by its own weight, or some other accident, it was torn away, 

 and fell into the urethra, through which it was voided; and hence it was that 

 this woman never suspected herself, till very lately, at all troubled with the 

 stone. 



For these 3 months past, while it was sticking in the urinary passage, ancf 

 coming away, she has suffered great pains, and a perpetual strangury, or an in- 

 voluntary dropping of her water from her; and this infirmity still continues, 

 the largeness of the stone having overstretched the fibres that compose the 

 sphincter of the bladder in its passage through it, whence their tone is so re- 

 laxed they have lost all power of retension ; and for this reason, I find alP 

 women that void stones this way, of any considerable size, are constantly at- 

 tended with this weakness. 



Since my writing the foregoing accoant, Mr. Thomas Prbby, an ingenious 

 surgeon of this town, has lately practised the extraction of such stones 

 entire, or without incision, very successfully, in two remarkable instances. 

 The first instance is the more remarkable, as the girl is very young, and 

 consequently the passage of her urethra strait and small, and as the stone 

 <vas very long, and considerably large for one of her years. Fig. 10 expresses 

 exactly enough both its shape and size. The child was about 6 years old; for 

 some years past she had been so miserably afflicted with the stone, and a per- 

 petual incontinency of her urine, that her parents at any hazard were willing to 

 attempt relieving her of so violent a pain, and so foul a distemper. In con- 

 sequence the child being placed in a convenient posture, in a man's lap sitting 

 across a table, with her arms tied down to her legs, by a sort of bandage usual 

 in these cases, the surgeon first passed his catheter into the neck of the blad- 



VOL. III. 4 B 



