Page:The Hunterian Oration 1839.djvu/41

34 THE HUNTERIAN ORATION. the works of antiquity which deserves to be recorded in connection with the modern improvements of our art. It is not yet so clear as might be supposed, whether to the present or to a past age, posterity will award the honour of the original idea and practice of comminuting the stone in the bladder. Hippocrates speaks of a certain Ammonius in Alexandria, who, having made a small hole in the bladder, then pro- ceeded to cut the stone into pieces by an instrument resembling, it is stated, the chisel of the statuary, whence he received the appellation of “lithotomus,” the stone cutter.* Here was combined the operation by incision with the proceeding of the modern lithotri- tist. But still more closely has Sir Philip Crampton, the distinguished Surgeon-General of Ireland, traced the connection of lithotrity with the practice of a past age, for he has found in a record lodged in the State Paper Office, and dated 270 years ago, the observation that a stone was voided by Sir Henry Sidney, the Lord Deputy for the time being, which had been broken by the surgeon into many pieces; the discovery of this curious historical fact having been made by a gentle- man upon whom the Surgeon-General had performed

experiment and observation are active in ascertaining the best ma- terial for the construction of this immoveable apparatus.

1824, Paralléle des divers moyens de traiter les calculeux par le Docteur Civiale. A Cornelius Celsus. Book VII. �
 * Rapport fait 4 Y Academie des Sciences par Chaussier et Perey,