Part of a Letter from Dr J. Wallace, F. R. S. to the Publisher, concerning a Stone Cut out of the Bladder, Having Hair in It, etc.

VII. Part of a Letter from Dr J. Wallace, F. R.S. to the Publisher, concerning a Stone cut out of the Bladder, having hair in it, &c. I am sorry I can give so ill an account of these things you wrote of to me: For that of Sir William Elliot's pissing Hair at several times, I had from Sir Archibald Stevenson and Dr Pitcairn, his Physicians; and after his death I did see with the Doctor at the Lady Elliot's Lodgings in Edinburg, the Stone that was taken out of his Bladder, which was about the bigness of a Goose Egg; the Stone was hard and heavy, and for the most part cover'd over with a Scurf, not unlike the Lime-morter of Walls, and in the chinks of the Scurf there were some Hairs grown out. 'Twas thought the other Hairs he piss'd in his life time, which were a great many, and some of an extraordinary length, did grow out of that Stone, because when the Hairs would hang out at his Penis, as they did frequently, to his great torment, they were oblig'd to pull them out, which was always with that resistance as if pluck'd out by the root. This is all I can now remember; but Dr Pitcairn, if you'll please to write to him, will no doubt give you a full account of the matter. It was too from the Doctor I had the discovery of the Cheat of these Stones that an account was sent you of, and which you publish'd in the Phil. Tran. N. 242. p. 264. The particulars of that story I have quite forgot; all I remember is, that Dr Pitcairn was at the pains to find out the Imposture; and it was found at last that a roguish Boy to be kept from School, had so much cunning as to impose on a fond Mother and other people. Battel, October 25. 1700. VIII. Part of a Letter from Dr George Garden to the Publisher, concerning a Stone cut from a Child, having a Flint within it. There was a remarkable passage that fell out in this Shire concerning a young Boy of five or six years of age, who was Cut of the Stone, and when the Stone was taken out of the Bladder, being by accident broke a little, there was to be seen within it a Flint Stone shaped like to that of a Pistol, with the Calculus crusted about it. I saw this Gravel Stone with my eyes, having the Flint in one side of it, but crusted above. It is still in the Custody of the Child's Father-in-Law, one Mr Alexander Robertson, Minister of the Church of Longside, in Buchan, and the Surgeon was one Mr Smith, who lives near to Gordoun Castle. That the Flint has not been formed in the Bladder, but that this might have been occasioned by the Boys swallowing of the Flint Stone, seems probable from another strange instance of a man in the same Country, his voiding