134 
URETHRAL AND URETAL CALCULI. 
and size as the one already described. This I lost no time in 
extracting, an operation easily accomplished by simply cutting 
down on the concretion, and effected with no further restraint 
than the twitch. Immediate relief followed. He staled at 
once freely, and without any manifestation of pain, and his 
owner was not slow to indulge the hope of his ultimate re- 
covery. The evil, however, was not to be so easily got rid of 
though my course was sufficiently clear ; and I determined 
to persevere with the acid, thinking it just probable that by 
this means the stone might become so far softened in its 
structure as to admit of being broken down with the fingers, 
or otherwise forced onwards to the bladder. 
In this way matters went on up to the I2th of the same 
month, on which day I was summoned in haste to Chatford 
by the intelligence that my patient had suddenly become 
worse. On my arrival I found him suffering at intervals 
extreme pain, with a pulse upwards of 80 and very feeble, 
respiration weak and hurried, extremities cold, and buccal 
membrane clammy and fetid. The symptoms were, in fact, 
those of subacute peritonitis, of a character likely to termi- 
nate fatally. Belladonna and opiate mixtures were adminis- 
tered night and morning, but without any effect beyond that 
of mitigating in some degree the extreme pain, and the poor 
animal gradually sunk, and died on the night of the 18th. 
Post-mortem examination, six hours after death, demon- 
strated considerable disease of the mucous coat of the 
bladder, and great thickening of the ureter on the left side, 
throughout its entire course, in the canal of which, within 
about two inches of the bladder, firmly impacted and com- 
pletely closing the channel of communication with the 
kidney, was the calculus 1 have already spoken of. Kidney, 
however, on this side there was none: indeed not the slightest 
trace of anything resembling the gland could be observed, 
but in its place were several large abscesses. It was the 
bursting of one of these abscesses which appeared to have 
been the exciting cause of death ; a large quantity, not less, 
I think, than half a gallon, of pus having thereby escaped 
into the abdominal cavity, and set up that inflammation of 
the peritoneum which eventually proved fatal. But it is 
equally clear that the calculus in question was the real though 
more remote cause of all the mischief. By the gradual 
growth of the concretion the ureter became eventually closed, 
and the urine was thus driven back upon the kidney which 
thereby became inflamed. Suppuration followed, and ab- 
sorption of the gland, as the abscesses increased, until at 
length the poor sufferer sunk under the singular complica- 
