Early Nineteenth Century Chemistry and the Analysis of Urinary Stones

The book explores the history of urinary stones and the efforts of chemists, physicians, and surgeons to understand and treat them. It highlights the blurring of boundaries between these fields and the collaboration that resulted from the problem. The primary audience is historically-minded chemists, surgeons, physicians, and museum professionals.

Format: Hardback
Length: 188 pages
Publication date: 14 July 2023
Publisher: Springer International Publishing AG

Chemists, physicians, and surgeons worked together to solve the problem of urinary stones in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Chemical analysis was a new means of understanding these stones and researchers hoped to prevent their formation entirely. Physicians and surgeons also hoped to identify substances that would reduce the size of stones, leading to their easier removal from the body. Urinary stones and other stones of the body caused the boundaries of surgery, chemistry, and medicine to blur, and the problem of the stone was transformational and spurred collaboration between chemistry and medicine. Some radical physicians in America and Britain combined this nascent medical advancement with older disciplines, like humoral theory. Chemists, surgeons, and physicians in Charleston, Philadelphia, and London focused on the stones of the body, and chemical societies and museums also involved themselves in the problem of the stone. Institutions in Charleston, Philadelphia, and London served as repositories of specimens for testing and study as previously disparate practitioners and disciplines worked toward the comprehensive knowledge that could, perhaps, end suffering from stones. The primary audience of this book is historically-minded chemists, surgeons, physicians, and museum professionals.

Dimension: 235 x 155 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9783031349720
Edition number: 1st ed. 2023