TO CALCULOUS DISEASES. 
427 
faculty, who unite, in so a high a degree, the requisites for prosecuting a diffi- 
cult professional investigation. 
The middle and active period of life, laborious and healthful occupations, 
together with a fair opportunity of obtaining nutritive aliment, and ordinary 
comforts, seem best adapted for producing a freedom from chronic ailments, 
and among them, from urinary calculus. 
Mr. Hutchison has shown, how unfrequent the latter is among sailors ; and 
there is every reason for supposing that this freedom is, in a considerable 
degree, participated by the military profession. On this point I have thought 
it desirable to institute some inquiries, the result of which I shall have the 
honour to lay before the Society. 
In a valuable report published by Sir James Macgrigor, on the diseases of 
the British army in the peninsula, under the command of the Duke of Wel- 
lington, no case of calculus appears to have presented itself during the period 
of which he treats, viz. between December 1811 and June 1814, though above 
330,000 cases were admitted into the general and regimental hospitals during 
that period*. 
In the last 15 years, Sir James informs me, that 4 cases only of calculus have 
occurred in the English army in Britain ; and Mr. Crampton, the surgeon- 
general of Ireland, states, that one example of lithotomy only, in which the ope- 
ration was performed by himself, has occurred, within the same period, in the 
army in Ireland. I am, however, able to add to this, on the authority of 
Dr. Pitcairne of Cork, the case of an officer of the Scots Greys, whom I had 
occasion to visit at the barracks here, who was operated upon at Cork, by 
Dr. Woodroffe, about two years since, in his way to join his regiment. 
Mr. Crampton likewise informed me, on the authority of Sir James Wylie, 
physician to the late, and to the present Emperor of Russia, that calculous 
diseases are hardly known in the Russian army. 
The Baron Delessert of Paris, has done me the favour to procure from the 
Baron Larrey, and M. Gama, surgeons-in-chief to the great military hospitals 
of Gros Caillou, and Val de Grace, in the French metropolis, a report as to 
the prevalence of calculous complaints among the French soldiery. The Baron 
* Sketch of the Medical History of the British Armies of the Peninsula of Spain and Portugal 
during the late Campaigns. Medico-Chirurgical Transactions, vol. vi. p. 381. 
