be extracted by a hook or crotchet made for that purpose. This hook is of a semi-circular form, smooth externally, and rough on the inside. By the help of it the stone is to be taken out dexterously, attention being paid to the shape of it. He mentions that Ammonius the lithotomist was in the practice of breaking down the stone into pieces when it was so large that it could not be extracted without tearing the neck of the bladder. He states that the operation is seldom required in the case of females, but that if the stone be large it may sometimes be necessary. The fingers are to be introduced into the vagina, as they are into the rectum of males, and then, if the patient be a girl, an incision is to be made under the left edge (of the labia pudendi?); but if in an adult female, a transverse incision is to be made on both sides between the urethra and os pubis. The above is but an abridgment of the Celsian description, which, it must be admitted, is attended with considerable difficulties. We shall give the passage in which he describes the form and place of the incisions. “Incidi super vesicæ cervicem juxta anum cutis plaga lunata usque ad cervicem vesicæ debet, cornibus ad _coxas_ spectantibus paulum: deinde eâ parte, qua resima plaga est, etiamnum sub cute altera transversa plaga facienda est, qua cervix aperiatur; donec urinæ iter pateat, sic, ut plaga paulo major, quam calculus sit.” Sprengel renders the words “cornibus ad coxas spectantibus paulum” by “dont les angles regardant les aines;” but _coxæ_ signifies properly not the groins, but the _nates_, viz., the buttocks, or perhaps the hips. (Celsus viii, 1.) In the English translation of M. Foubert’s paper on Lithotomy, in the ‘Memoirs of the French Academy of Surgery,’ these words are more correctly rendered, “the extremities of which incision must be in some measure directed towards the thighs.” Dr. Milligan, however, in his edition of Celsus, proposes to read _coxam_, by which he supposes that Celsus understood the _coxa sinistra_. He adds: “hinc liquet, cornua plagæ Celsianæ, ut hodiernæ, coxam sinistram respexisse.” We are inclined to adopt this conjecture, as it makes the Celsian description agree with that of our author and his Arabian copyists, all of whom direct the first incision to be made towards the left _nates_. The words “qua resima plaga est,” must signify, we suppose, the curvature in the middle of the incision where the two horns unite. M. Foubert reads “qua strictior ima plaga est,” but we suspect without any proper authority from MSS. We may be permitted to remark that the advantages of the semi-lunar incision are pointed out by Bromfield, and the Celsian operation was generally practised by the late Baron Dupuytren of Paris.