NEW SOLVENT FOR STONE IN THE BLADDER. 227 
"The starch grains are composed of a series of juxta-posed 
concentric layers, which may be compared to the lami- 
nee of an onion. Of these layers, the innermost are the most 
recently formed. The composition of all of them is the same, 
but their cohesion is different; the inner or younger ones 
being less cohesive, and, therefore, more readily soluble 
than the outer or older ones. The rings, or rugse, so dis- 
tinctly perceived on grains of potato-starch, depend on the 
concentric layers." 
ART. LI V.— -OBSERVATIONS AND RESEARCHES UPON A 
NEW SOLVENT FOR STONE IN THE BLADDER. By 
Alexander Ure, A. M., Surgeon to the Western Ophthalmic Insti- 
tution, Honorary Member of the Pharmaceutical Society. 
In pursuing some inquiries relative to the treatment of 
certain forms of urinary disease, my attention was directed 
to the properties of carbonate of lithia, a substance of which 
no therapeutic application has been heretofore made. It 
nevertheless occurs as a constituent of various mineral wa- 
ters; namely, in those of the Kreuzbrunnen of Marienbad, 
of Klausen, of the Josephsquelle at Bilin, of the Obersalz- 
brunnen in Silesia, of Lubien in Galicia, of the Kranchen at 
Ems, and of the Franzensbrunnen at Eger. The four first 
named waters have, according to Osann, one of the latest 
and most complete writers on the subject, been found of 
service in some unhealthy conditions of the urinary organs.* 
* Physiklaischmedicimsche Darstdlung der bekannten Ileilquellen, 
Berlin, 1839, page 94. 
