ABSTRACT
Bladder stone is one of the oldest clinical conditions described in medical history and was the first to be treated by an elective surgical procedure. Bladder stone was much more prevalent in the eighteenth and nineteenth century than it is today and attracted much attention from the medical profession. Every hospital had a collection of urinary calculi. By 1810, when William Hyde Wollaston had described cystine in a new and rare type of urinary calculus, he had already characterized five chemically distinct principle constituents of urinary calculi in humans. These were lithic or uric acid, ammonium magnesium phosphate, calcium oxalate, calcium carbonate, and sodium urate which he had also discovered in gouty joints in 1797. In seeking the cause of urinary calculi, Fourcroy and Vauquelin investigated the composition of urine and developed procedures for the isolation and study of urea.
