VOL. XX.] PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 227 



morning was fair and clear, but before noon there came a violent storm of 

 thunder, lightning, and rain ; which caused the dry reapers to retreat for 

 shelter to a quick-set hedge, with a ditch by the side of it, of about 20 yards 

 in length, about 20 persons in all ; of whom 4 were killed, 8 others danger- 

 ously hurt, of whom 1 was a woman great with child; whereof 6 were in the 

 ditch, and 2 out of it, the rest not much hurt. 



The persons that were hurt, but not killed, were grievously wounded in 

 many parts of their body, as if with small shot, in great quantities ; the wounds 

 of which were very difficult to be cured. Their clothes were also perforated in 

 many places. 



Some additional Remarks on extracting the Stone of the Bladder from the 

 Female Sex. By Thomas Molyneux, M. D. S, R. S. N° 236, p. 1 1 . 



About 6 years since, a paper of mine was read before our Philosophical 

 Society here in Dublin, and afterwards published in the Philos. Trans. N° 202, 

 wherein I gave an account of a stone, of an extraordinary size, spontaneously 

 voided through the urethra, by a woman here in Dublin : and as a corollary or 

 deduction from this history, I there proposed the extraction of the stone, by 

 the gradual dilatation of the urethra, or neck of the bladder, without any man- 

 ner of section, as the most safe and easy way, and of most general use, for 

 freeing the female sex from the stone in the bladder. 



I then alleged two instances of fact, to prove not only the reasonableness, 

 but the real success of this practice ; and I have been since still more confirmed 

 in that opinion by several other successful operations I have seen of the like 

 kind : but more particularly, by one lately performed in this town on a girl, 

 between 11 and 12 years of age, who for 6 years past has been severely 

 afflicted with all the painful and usual symptoms of the stone, but on the 

 l6th of October, was happily relieved, by only dilating gently the neck of the 

 bladder, and then extracting a stone of a very considerable bulk, without 

 making any incision at all. The whole operation was performed in or 7 

 minutes ; and it was the more remarkable from the extraordinary magnitude of 

 the stone, the shape and size of which are exactly represented in fig. 3, pi. 5, 

 It may seem almost incredible that a solid of this bulk should be forced through 

 the urethra of so small and so young a child, without any manner of section : 

 and that the child should recover so as to be perfectly well, without the least 

 ill accident succeeding the operation. But we may gather hence, of what vast 

 extension this urinary passage, though naturally strait, is capable ; and how 

 much still wider it may be dilated, in persons of mature age; who may yet 



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