28. Lithotomy through the ages: Big stones, small stones and all the ways to cut them out

2007 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
J. E. Elliott
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Effective Treatment ◽  
Medical Management ◽  
Urinary Calculi ◽  
Stone Disease ◽  
History Of Urology ◽  
Endoscopic Techniques ◽  
Bladder Stones ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Times

The first known specimen of urological interest was a vesicle calculi dated to 5000 BC, found by Elliot Smith in 1901, in an ancient tomb in Egypt. Since these ancient times, urolithiasis has been a condition which fascinated and frustrated the medical world, both in understanding of its etiology and in how to treat patients afflicted with such stones. Medical management of urinary calculi has a complex and suspect past; when such therapies failed, as their mystical and unscientific approaches often did, patients sometimes resorted to more drastic and dramatic means such as lithotomy. Lithotomy was known since early times in India and Persia; when it was introduced to Europe is unclear. Writings by Susruta in India describe early forms of the procedure, and techniques were improved by Celsus of Rome (1st Century AD), remaining in use, largely unchanged until the eighteenth Century. Marianus Sanctus (1490-1550) described a technique, the “grand appareil” which superseded the Celsus method, and other approaches by Franco (1500-1570), Jacques de Beaulieu (1651-1714), Johann Rau (1658-1709) and William Cheselden (1688-1752) gained and lost dominance over the centuries. Perhaps most interesting about lithotomy was the development of the tools used in its practice. From the beginning, the various knives, forceps, dilators and sounds became ever more complicated, intricate and gruesome looking, resembling more the armamentarium of a torture master than the curative tools of a physician. As endoscopic techniques began and evolved, the necessity to make large incisions for stone removal decreased. Nonetheless, the approaches and instrumentation used to treat bladder stones helped shape the practice of urology and contributed to the continuing goal of minimizing invasion of the patient while still providing effective treatment of stone disease and other genitourinary problems. Murphy LJT. The History of Urology. Springfield, Ill.: Charles C. Thomas, 1972. Chevalier RL. Kidney and urologic disorders in the age of enlightenment. Am J Nephrol 1994; 14(4-6):461-6. Herman, JR. Urology; a view through the retrospectroscope. Hagerstown, Md.: Harper & Row, 1973.

scholarly journals HISTORY OF VARICOCELE SURGERY

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (4) ◽  
pp. 88-96
Author(s):  
E. V. Petrochenkov ◽  
V. V. Rostovskaya
Keyword(s):  
Effective Treatment ◽  
Middle Age ◽  
Minimum Risk ◽  
Treatment Development ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Times

The review describes the history of varicocele treatment development from ancient times to the present day; from the frst mentioning of the disease by early Greeks (works by Celsus and Galen), surgeries of middle-age surgeons until the prime of modern varicocele surgery. In the middle and at the end of the XX century the understanding of this disease and methods of its therapy underwent significant changes. Many methods of varicocele surgery failed to stand the test of time and are of historical interest only. Other methods formed the basis for modern varicocele surgery and promote effective treatment with minimum risk for complications and recurrence.

scholarly journals Insights on the history of tuberculosis: Novalis and the romantic idealization

2019 ◽  
pp. 7-25
Author(s):  
Maria Do Sameiro Barroso
Keyword(s):  
Cystic Fibrosis ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
World Population ◽  
Pathogenic Agent ◽  
Romantic Poet ◽  
White Plague ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
And Control

Tuberculosis affected the world population since ancient times, being known to Hippocratic physicians. It was not completely understood and it was difficult to manage. From the eighteenth century onwards, it became highly devastating with a high sociological impact until Robert Koch (1843–1910) identified the pathogenic agent of tuberculosis, in 1882. His discovery enabled a progressive identification and control of infectious diseases. Novalis, born Georg Philipp Friedrich von Hardenberg (1772–1801), an early German Romantic poet, struck by the suffering and death of his fiancée, Sophie von Kühn (1782–1797), who died of a liver abscess as a complication of pulmonary tuberculosis, is a major founder of the romantic idealizing of the disease which lasted until the control of the endemic. Current medicine tends to identify the condition which struck Novalis as cystic fibrosis. However, his name will always be associated with the white plague, the feared and ethereal disease that killed and inspired young artists and talented poets.

Emotions, philosophy of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert C. Solomon
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Working Together ◽  
History Of ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
The Right

Emotions have always played a role in philosophy, even if philosophers have usually denied them centre stage. Because philosophy has so often been described as first and foremost a discipline of reason, the emotions have often been neglected or attacked as primitive, dangerous or irrational. Socrates reprimanded his pupil Crito, advising that we should not give in to our emotions, and some of the ancient Stoic philosophers urged a life of reason free from the enslavement of the emotions, a life of apatheia (apathy). In Buddhism, too, much attention has been given to the emotions, which are treated as ‘agitations’ or klesas. Buddhist ‘liberation’, like the Stoic apatheia, becomes a philosophical ideal, freedom from the emotions. Philosophers have not always downgraded the emotions, however. Aristotle defended the view that human beings are essentially rational animals, but he also stressed the importance of having the right emotions. David Hume, the eighteenth-century empiricist, insisted that ‘reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions’. In the nineteenth century, although Hegel described the history of philosophy as the development of reason he also argued that ‘nothing great is ever done without passion’. Much of the history of philosophy can be told in terms of the shifting relationship between the emotions (or ‘passions’) and reason, which are often at odds, at times seem to be at war, but ideally should be in harmony. Thus Plato painted a picture of the soul as a chariot with three horses, reason leading the appetites and ‘the spirited part’, working together. Nietzsche, at the end of the nineteenth century, suggested that ‘every passion contains its own quantum of reason’. Nietzsche’s suggestion, that emotion and reason are not really opposites but complementary or commingled, has been at the heart of much of the debate about emotions since ancient times. Are emotions intelligent, or are they simply physical reactions? Are they mere ‘feelings’, or do they play a vital role in philosophy and in our lives?

Did Shakespeare know Schizophrenia?

1985 ◽  
Vol 146 (4) ◽  
pp. 436-438 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nigel M. Bark
Keyword(s):  
Mental Illness ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Serious Mental Illness ◽  
Psychiatric Patients ◽  
Early Adulthood ◽  
Chronic Schizophrenia ◽  
Progressive Deterioration ◽  
History Of ◽  
Real Increase ◽  
Ancient Times

There is doubt whether schizophrenia, the most common and most devastating serious mental illness, existed much more than 200 years ago. Many authors who have written recently on the history of schizophrenia suggest that it is a disease that first appeared towards the end of the eighteenth century and rapidly increased in prevalence throughout the nineteenth. Cooper & Sartorius (1977) ask “Why are good descriptions of what can now be recognized as chronic schizophrenia so scarce in European medieval and earlier literature?” and they associate schizophrenia with industrialisation. Torrey (1980) argues that although descriptions of madness, including hallucinations and delusions, date to ancient times, schizophrenia as we know it with an onset in early adulthood and progressive deterioration, is not described. He associates schizophrenia with civilisation, and proposes an infectious cause. Hare (1979, 1982) supports this hypothesis, providing detailed evidence for a real increase in hospitalised psychiatric patients who most probably had schizophrenia in the last century (Hare, 1983), and also states that there are no good earlier descriptions of schizophrenia.

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