Volume 1

A descriptive and illustrated catalogue of the calculi and other animal concretions contained in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London / [by Thomas Taylor].

Date:
1842-5
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A descriptive and illustrated catalogue of the calculi and other animal concretions contained in the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons in London / [by Thomas Taylor]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    treatise we also find probably the first attempt to determine the nature of a calculus by actual experiment. Van Helmont submitted, what appears to have been a uric acid calculus, to dry distillation, and gives a very excellent descrip- tion of the effects of heat upon that concretion :-— Exsectum Duelech distil- lavi per se, nec quicquam elicui, preeter spiritum foetidum urinae, et flavum crystallum, simulque oleum, quale ex desiccata urina trahitur. Quod autem in fundo mihi remansit, terra erat nigra, combusta, friabilis et insipida.—Cap. v. From this experiment he drew the conclusion, that urinary calculi were com- posed of earth and the spirit of urine*. So crude, however, were the ideas entertained with regard to the formation of urinary calculi, even at a much later period, that in 1717* in the MS. Sloanian Catalogue, the tuberculated exterior of the mulberry calculus is explained, by supposing the urine to have been in a state of ebullition ; and even after the dis- covery of Scheele, so little was known of the mode of examining these sub- stances, that it is recorded by Dr. Marcet, that Mr. Lane published some ex- periments on calculi in 1792, in which he had endeavoured to analyse them by exposing them merely to the heat of an assayer's furnace f. Scheele's discovery in 1776 must be regarded as the first step towards an accurate knowledge of urinary calculi. That acute and laborious philoso- pher not only showed, that these bodies consist, for the most part, of a peculiar concrete acid, which was readily soluble in alkaline solutions, but de- scribed in the most accurate manner its leading properties. He also added the important facts, that this acid was contained in all human urine, and that it was the principal constituent of the lateritious sediment in febrile disorders. To this substance the name of Bezoardic acid was subsequently applied, which, on the revision of nomenclature of chemistry by the associated French chemists in 1787, was changed to that of Lithic acid. Dr. Pearson in 1798 published some experiments in the Philosophical Transactions, endeavouring to prove that it did not possess the characters of an acid, but those of an animal oxide, and proposed for it the name of uric oxide ; since which time, the terms Utldc and uric have been used indifferently. It has been asserted by Fourcroy j;, and the * J. B. Van Helmont, Opnsc. Med. Inaudita, 4to edit., Amsterdam. t Essay on Calculous Disorders. % Annales du Museum National d'Histoire Nat. vol.i. b2