On some new species of animal concretions / [Thomas Taylor].

  • Taylor, Thomas, 1814-1892.
Date:
[1845]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On some new species of animal concretions / [Thomas Taylor]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    1/12 (page 1)
    IX, On some New Species of Animal Concretions. By Thomas Taylor, Surgeon. To Bichard Taylor, Esq. Dear Sir, A S the Catalogue of the Calculi belonging to the Royal College of Surgeons has now been published some months, and there consequently remains no further necessity for silence, I purpose in the following paper to redeem the promise I formerly made, of describing some of the more re¬ markable of the concretions which have been discovered du¬ ring the examination of that very large collection; and also to detail the experimental proofs on which the assertions as to their composition were founded in the short notice which you did me the favour of inserting in this Journal in May 1844. I do this the more willingly, as it was considered advisable to omit the details of the analyses in the Catalogue. More¬ over, the Catalogue having but a limited circulation, many of the new facts that have been elicited would not otherwise be generally known. I shall, however, confine myself in this paper to the notice only of such concretions as are entirely new, or whose composition has been either imperfectly or in¬ correctly described. For the historical account of the succes¬ sive steps by which our present knowledge of these bodies has been obtained, and for the description of the more common species of calculi, I must refer to the Catalogue itself. Urinary Calculus from the Iguana, consisting of Urate of Potass. Small and unimportant quantities of urate of potass may occasionally be detected in human urinary calculi, but no in¬ stance of this salt constituting an entire calculus has hitherto been described. There are three specimens of this description in the College collection, which resemble each other in every respect save in size. Two of them were described in the MS. Catalogue of Sir Hans Sloane’s collection as “ Piedra de Yguana,”and there is little doubt but that they were taken from the urinary bladder of some of the large Iguanas or tree lizards of South America. The other concretion had no history, but had been described as “a mixed calculus in which uric acid predominates.” Although much larger, it was so similar in composition and general appearance to the others, that there does not appear any reason to doubt its having a similar ori gin. In their external characters these concretions resembled calculi composed of the mixed phosphates, being made up ol