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2 a very serious impression on me, and I suppose that my baby
3 was also affected with my grief, as I observed on that very day
4 he was unable to pass his urine, in spite of all his exertions,
5 until he was relieved by suction. From that time he enjoyed
6 good health for several months, yet this stoppage came on
7 periodically, that is to say, as often as the stone obstructed the
8 urethra, on which occasion he used to rub the part, stamp
9 with his feet, and cry for help.” After this relation she begged
10 my pardon, adding, “one ought to conceal nothing from the
11 doctor. Yet,” continued she, “ I have still one circumstance to
12 communicate to you ; previously to the operation, my child
13 had the bad habit of wetting the bed ; but he has never done so
14 since.”
15 In the present state of medical knowledge, it is impossible
16 to assert whether the cause of the production of stony concre-
17 tions be connected with the sensations of the nurse, or whether
18 other circumstances co-operate, as we find such concretions in
19 different parts of the body, not only in the urethra, urine-
20 bladder, kidneys, and the gall-organs, but also in the stomach
21 and intestines of horses, oxen, goats, &c., as just mentioned.
22 But there is no doubt that they are substances of the animal
23 body. We have in ourselves different mineral substances, and
24 a sickly habit causes them to accumulate. I once found five
25 tolerably large stones pressed in the neck of a bladder to such
26 a degree, that I cannot conceive how the man was able to void
27 one drop of urine. Several cases occurred to me, in which,
28 a few years after the stone had been extracted, new ones
29 accumulated, because the origin of the disease was not eradi-
30 cated ; and I recommend every operator to combine an
31 internal with an external treatment, the extraction or the crush-
32 ing of the stone being nothing but a palliative.
33 At Bokhara, I found that the guinea-worm (Dracunculus)
34 occurred very frequently. At Cabul, I saw a strange case of
35 this kind, in which a merchant had drunk the water from which
36 it originates a year previously at Bombay. The worm was at
37 the hollow of the knee. Upon its appearing and being pulled,