82 
VESICAL AND BILIARY CALCULI. 
very hard, feeling like a calculus. Light pressure, from below 
upwards, caused this body to ascend into'the bladder ; and then 
the urine, quite clear, flowed in abundance. All colic and agi¬ 
tation immediately subsided, and the animal commenced feed¬ 
ing, relieved from all his pain. 
Now that the bladder was empty I felt for the stone within 
its cavity, per rectum, and having easily found it, I pushed it 
back into the urethra, into its original place of lodgment, and 
thence endeavoured to force it onwards ; but all my efforts 
proved unavailing : so I determined on lithotomy. By leaving 
the stone in the urethra I found I could at pleasure reproduce 
the symptoms : though, sometimes, by a peculiar twisting of the 
loins, the animal himself could force it back into the bladder. 
Having with hobbles confined the hind legs of the horse in 
the erect posture, as for nicking, and forced up his head with a 
twitch, I grasped the stone within the impassable and swollen 
part of the urethra in which it was driginally found. The tail 
being held erect by an assistant, I directed a straight bistouri 
longitudinally through the middle of the prominence, from 
above downwards, to the extent of two inches, and through this 
incision easily turned out the stone with my fingers. It was of 
an oval shape, flattened on one side, pointed at one extremity, 
round at the other, yellowish black, shagreened throughout its 
texture, and very hard. A dossil of lint was placed upon the 
wound and confined there by suture. 
No untoward symptom supervened; unless, might so be called, 
some inflammation around the wound occasioned by the acridity 
of the urine, which for the subsequent four or five days in part 
passed through it. This ceasing, the wound cicatrized rapidly 
and the animal was perfectly restored nineteen days after the 
operation. 
August 2,1824, a mare in being led from the stable to a field, 
about 300 yards distant from it, was suddenly seized with such 
a weakness in her hinder parts that she fell down several times, 
and was at length unable to rise without assistance ; in conse¬ 
quence of which she was taken back into the stable. The 
next morninp; I saw her, and found that for some davs she had 
been observed to be weak in the loins, which now had increased 
to such a degree that she with pain stood erect, and she reeled 
