Lithotrity and lithotomy compared : being an analytical examination of the present methods of treating stone in the bladder, with suggestions for rendering lithotrity applicable to the disease in almost all its stages and varieties, and remarks on the general treatment of gravel and stone / by Thomas King.

  • King, Thomas, 1802-1839.
Date:
1832
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Lithotrity and lithotomy compared : being an analytical examination of the present methods of treating stone in the bladder, with suggestions for rendering lithotrity applicable to the disease in almost all its stages and varieties, and remarks on the general treatment of gravel and stone / by Thomas King. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University, through the Medical Heritage Library. The original may be consulted at the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University.

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    come mixed with the general mass of the circulating medium, in the venae canae and right cavities of the heart. The urea is of such a nature, is so azotized a substance, and so difficultly separated from the body as to require a special apparatus ; and the li- quids alluded to, being aqueous and non- azotized, are, for the most part, employed to facilitate its escape. They are used as a means of dilution, without which, the che- mical equilibrium, which obtains in the animal system cannot be long preserved.* * Without exaggeration the discovery that the veins absorb these fluids may be considered almost as important as that of the circulation of the blood. It has strengthened the science of pathology and given to therapeutics a degree of certainty which our ordinary means of observation could never have afforded. Writers on dietetics should place it at the head of their works, as a main part of the basis upon which rules of diet are to be founded, and moralists might set it forth with advantage in recommending maxims of temperance. Horace says, Vacuis committere venis, Nil nisi lene decet. and Shakspeare speaks of poison coursing, Through the natural gates and alleys of the body. But it has never sufficiently come home to us, that the mix- tures we take of sauces, wines, punch, &c. must run through the blood vessels, and be strained through the very tissue of our organs, before they can be expelled from the body.