Mr. Home's Observations , &c, 245 
The opinion, that calculi in the human bladder have been 
entirely dissolved, has received its principal support from in- 
stances having occurred, and those by no means few in num- 
ber, where the symptoms went entirely away while the patients 
were using alkaline medicines, and never afterwards returned. 
This evidence appears to be very strong, but it will be found 
from the following cases that it is not so in reality. Since the 
fallacy has been detected in all the instances in which an 
opportunity was afforded of examining the bladder after 
death. Two of these I shall particularly notice, because they 
were published during the patients’ life time in proof of the 
stone having been dissolved. 
Both patients were great sufferers from the symptoms of 
stone for many years ; but when they arrived at the age of 
sixty-eight, or thereabout, the symptoms entirely left them. 
The one had been taking the saline draught in a state of effer- 
vescence, under the direction of the late Dr. Hulme : the 
cure was attributed to this medicine, and the case was pub- 
lished in proof of its efficacy. When the patient died I 
examined the bladder, and found twenty calculi ; the largest 
of the size of a hazel nut, the others smaller. It appeared 
that the going off of the symptoms had arisen from the pos- 
terior lobe of the prostate gland having become enlarged (a 
change which it frequently undergoes about that period of 
life, ) and having formed a barrier between the calculi and 
the orifice of the bladder, so that they no longer irritated 
that part either in the act of making water, or in the different 
movements of the body, but lay in the lower posterior part 
of the bladder without producing any disturbance. Their 
