CALCULI IN THE KIDNEYS OF A COVY. 
245 
healthy, until the day previous to my seeing her, when she com- 
menced eating dirt. If the sabulous matter that she ate began to 
assume a calculous form in the pelvis of the kidneys in so short a 
time, it is completely contrary to the theory generally entertained 
of the formation of calculi in the urinary organs. 
[It is singular that we have no history upon record of the symp- 
toms of the existence of renal calculi in any of our patients except 
the dog. Several museums contain specimens of calculi from 
the kidney of the horse, and of a very considerable size. In 
Mr. Ainslie’s there is one weighing more than six ounces, and it 
is evidently a fragment of a larger one. Another is perfect. It 
occupies the whole of the pelvis of the kidney, which is preserved 
with it. It weighed twenty ounces. I bought this beautiful speci- 
men from one of the knackers, but could not obtain any account of 
the symptoms during life. 
M. Rodet, junior, while Assistant Professor at Alfort, relates a 
case in which numerous small calculi, like those described by 
Mr. Tombs, were found in the kidney of a mare. She was 
fourteen years old, had been worked very hard, and had never had 
any symptoms of colic, or affection of the urinary organs. She 
met with an accident which eventually destroyed her. A great 
deal of abdominal inflammation had been caused by the accident ; 
but the left kidney was particularly inflamed, and was fully one- 
third more than the usual size. In the pelvis was a mass of yel- 
low muco-purulent matter, and likewise a considerable quantity of 
small calculi, varying in size from a coarse powder to the bulk of 
a lentil. The mucous membrane of the renal pelvis was thickened, 
hardened, indurated, of a deep yellow colour, and traversed by 
some capillary vessels injected with blood. The calculi, when 
washed and dried, were of an irregular form, rough, porous, of a 
grey-yellow colour approaching to brown, and totally destitute of 
smell. 
The right kidney was perfectly healthy*. 
The total absence of pain, compared with the dreadful tortures 
of the cow described by Mr. Tombs, is singular, especially consi- 
dering the enlargement of the kidney. 
M. Lautour gives a case of renal calculus in a dog. The pa- 
tient was an old Danish dog. During three or four years he had 
occasionally voided his urine with some difficulty, and he had 
walked slowly and with evident pain. He was sometimes better, 
and at other times worse ; but during the asparagus season, and 
when he was always obliged to eat a considerable quantity of that 
vegetable, he evidently suffered less pain. 
* Journal Pratique, 28, 178. 
K k 
VOL. XII. 
