A letter on the differences in the structure of calculi, which arise from their being formed in different parts of the urinary passages; and on the effects that are produced upon them by the internal use of solvent medicines / from William Brande to Everard Home.

  • Brande, William Thomas, 1788-1866
Date:
1808
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A letter on the differences in the structure of calculi, which arise from their being formed in different parts of the urinary passages; and on the effects that are produced upon them by the internal use of solvent medicines / from William Brande to Everard Home. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    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