Bladder Stone — A Historical Overview (1)

Abstract

Over the centuries the human race has been tormented by pain and suffering caused by urinary stones and that includes the famous and the formidable like the first Emperor of Roman Empire Caesar Augustus,  Physician William Harvey, Anatomist Antonio Scarpa, Oliver Cromwell, Napoleon Bonaparte, Isaac Newton, film maker Alfred Hitchcock, Hollywood film actor Roger Moore (James Bond), Ex-Indian Prime Minister Mrs Indira Gandhi, Ex-President of Indonesia Sukarno, Argentinian footballer Lionel Messie and Ex-Prime/ Chief Minister of Jammu & Kashmir State Mr Ghulam Mohammed Sadiq. Until very recently bladder stone used to be a common surgical diagnosis throughout the world and  before the advent of analgesia and anaesthesia surgical treatment for such stones used to be frighteningly painful — in fact torture — that would invariably lead to a fatal outcome. Sushruta Samitha, which is a collection of ancient Indian medical texts describes the suffering of a patient afflicted with a bladder stone as follows: ‘The tortured patient then grinds his teeth, presses on his abdomen and rubs his penis. Urine, flatus and faeces are passed with severe pains. In such a case, the stone is black, rough, irregular and covered with spikes like the maneleacadamba [Cadamba] flower.’⁽¹⁾