118 PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. [aNNO 1757. 



candid consideration of Lord Walpole's case, I shall trouble you with a few re- 

 marks which have occurred to me, in comparing it with the appearances found 

 in his lordship's body after death, of which you were so obliging as to send me a 

 particular account. 



1. Whatever doubts may have been entertained concerning the cause of Lord 

 Walpole's complaints, yet it now appears evidently beyond dispute that they must 

 have been owing, not to a scorbutic corrosive humour in his bladder, as was 

 imagined by some, but to stones lodged in it. These stones may possibly have 

 lain there since 1734 ; for from that time to Spring 1747, his lordship was free 

 of any gravelish complaints, only passing some red sand at times. But at what 

 time soever they may have first arrived in the bladder, in 1747 and 1748 they 

 seem to have acquired such a bulk, or were become so rough or pointed in 

 their surface, as to occasion great pain, frequent provocations to urine, and 

 sometimes bloody urine ; especially after any considerable motion. These com- 

 plaints however were soon relieved by swallowing daily an oz. of Alicant soap, and 

 3 English pints of lime-water made with calcined oyster-shells: and from 1748 

 to 1757 his lordship was kept almost entirely free from any return of them, 

 except for some months of 1750 and 1751, during which he took only one-third 

 part of the quantity of soap and lime water above-mentioned. 



2. It is highly probable, nay I think altogether certain, that the soap and 

 lime-water not only relieved Lord Walpole of the painful symptoms occasioned 

 by the stones in his bladder, but also prevented their increase. If these stones 

 came into the bladder in 1734, they must, in so many years as his lordship lived 

 after this, have acquired a very great bulk : nay, if we suppose them not to have 

 been lodged in the bladder above a year before they began to occasion frequent 

 inclination to make urine, with pain, and sometimes sudden stoppages of urine ; 

 yet from 1746 to 1757, they ought to have grown to a much larger size than 

 that of the kernel of a Spanish nut. It is true, the stone may increase faster in 

 some patients, and slower in others ; but stones, after remaining a dozen or 

 more years in the bladder, generally weigh several ounces. Some years since I 

 saw a stone weighing near 6 oz. taken from a boy of no more than 14 years 

 of age. 



3. Lord Walpole's case not only shows the power of soap and lime-water to 

 relieve the painful symptoms, and prevent the increase of the stone in the blad- 

 der, but also makes it probable that these medicines do communicate to the 

 urine a power of dissolving the stone. In the beginning of 1749, his lordship 

 voided with his urine a calculous substance of a fiat shape, about the size of a 

 silver penny, covered with a soft white mucus ; and on the surfaces of the stones 

 found in his bladder there were some inequalities, which seem to have been 

 made by the separation of thin lamellae or scales. Further, the small stone 



