CASE. —A middle-aged man applied at St. Peter's Hospital in 1892, stating that he had put a piece of grass up his urethra a week previously, and believed it was now lodged in his bladder. I passed a sound, but feeling nothing, endeavored to withdraw the foreign body through a large evacuating catheter by suction with an aspira tor, without avail. It then occurred to me to use the cystoscope, and Mr. Hurry Fenwick, who was present, passed it at my request. By means of this instrument those who were with me were able to see a branched piece of grass lying on the right base of the bladder. It was then an easy matter for me to seize and extract it with the litho trite. The patient left the hospital on the following day, none the worse for his escapade.
Suction, with a large-eyed evacuating catheter and an aspirator bottle, as used for lithotrity, is an efficient means for extracting some foreign bodies of a yielding nature. I have recorded an instance " where a man passed a long piece of bacon rind up his urethra, and some days afterward a stiff pig's bristle several inches in length.
Symptoms of bladder irritation supervening, I adopted this method, and feeling something engaged in the eye of the catheter, after a few movements of the water in the syringe, I withdrew it together with the bristle which the catheter contained. Nothing was seen of the ba con, which was either dissolved or expelled, as after what was done all further symptoms of bladder irritation disappeared.
In 1864, a case was related at the Liverpool Medical Society, by Mr. Robert Hamilton, where he had removed from a man's bladder portions of calculous concretion formed on a feather, which had been passed by the patient for the relief of stricture. Here lithotomy was performed, as from the nature of the stricture lithotrity was hardly possible.
In the following instance a foreign body was removed from the bladder by means of the lithotrite :