An Account of the Right Honourable Horace Walpole Esq; Drawn up by Himself

IX. An Account of the Right Honourable Horace Walpole Esq; drawn up by himself *. April 1750. Read Jan. 24. ABOUT eighteen years ago, when his majesty resided at Hampton-Court, I was taken ill there with what was thought to be a fit of the colic only, being subject to that disorder, when I was very young; and the physician treated me accordingly. When some days after I was got perfectly well, in making water one morning I voided a stone in the pot about the bigness of a barley-corn, which without doubt had occasion'd, whilst it lay in the ureter, the colical pain, which I had felt. From that time I was frequently troubled with severe fits of the same pain, which lasted, until, by turpentine clysters, and other lubricating medicines, I had brought away a stone. Being advised at last to drink a pint of whey turn'd with cream of tartar every morning, and having followed that method from the beginning of May to November, at the end of two years, during which time my pains frequently returned and ended in the same manner, I found myself at last perfectly cured; for, having continued to drink the whey yearly, I continued free from those pains, voiding only at times * The supplement of this case continued till April 1752, will be published in these Transactions, as read before the Society June 4, 1752. times some red gravel, till 1747. In the spring of that year, whilst I was at a friend's house in town to dine there, having a need to urine, I made, instead of water, what was almost pure blood; and so from time to time almost all that year, I was often call'd upon to make water by very short intervals, which was more or less discoloured, and seldom very clear, and frequently attended with great pain and some gravel. That whole year, until the next spring, I took variety of things of a lubricating and cooling nature, which it is unnecessary to particularise, without any good effect. The next winter in town, I found I grew daily worse; and altho' I did not always make bloody or coffee water, yet my provocation to urine was more frequent, which, after an hasty gush of a spoonful of water, suddenly stopp'd, with excessive pain, and it was attended with a tenesmus, and an irritation at the end of my yard. Mr. Ranby, the surgeon, and Mr. Graham, the apothecary, having often visited me, and having had constant accounts of my disorder, and the symptoms, that accompanied it, both declared, that there must be a stone in my bladder. I was willing to be probed; but as I had no thought of being cut, Mr. Ranby declined undertaking that troublesome office, being persuaded, without the trial, that I had a stone in my bladder. Lord Barrington, hearing of my complaint, was so good as to send me, I think, the 5th volume of the Scots Medical Essays containing Dr. Whytt's account of the good effect, which taking of soap and lime-water had had in cases similar to mine; with ingenious reflections and directions relating to that cruel disease, and the remedy for it. I read them with great great satisfaction, and would have immediately fallen into that method; but my relations, touch'd with the fatal effects, which Dr. Jurin's lixivium had had upon the late lord Orford, would not suffer me to follow my own inclinations. While I had a severe fit upon me, I was visited by the earl of Morton, who, upon hearing what was my disorder, gave me an account of the powerful benefit and entire cure, which Mr. Summers had found in voiding the stone, that had tormented him for many years, by adding lime-water to the soap, which he had taken for some time without any success. This example, by the encouragement of Mr. Graham, my apothecary, fix'd my resolution to follow that method; and accordingly before I left the town, I often perus'd Dr. Whytt's essay relating to the stone. In March 1747-8. I began at first with taking every day half an ounce of Alicant soap, made up into pills with the syrup of marshmallows, and drank upon it about a pint of lime-water made of oyster-shells; mixing a spoonful of milk with it, and drinking a spoonful after it, to take away the nauseousness of the taste. Upon the road, as I went into the country in May 1748, I had a most severe fit at Newport, making bloody water, with frequent interruptions at short intervals, attended with violent pains, which continued upon me to such a degree, that I could not endure the horses to go more than a foot-pace for above 70 miles, until I came home. After my arrival there I was tolerably well for some days; but the least motion in a coach, or even in in walking, brought the disorder upon me. I was always (which is very remarkable) entirely easy, when I lay in bed, but was obliged, when I got up, to take any couch; and could not venture to move from thence, but upon necessary occasions. In the mean time, I continued to take the soap and lime-water, which by degrees I increased so far, as to take at different times an ounce of soap, and three pints of lime-water, every day, observing a very regular diet. After some months I found myself extremely easy in my ordinary motions; but I never ventured to walk far, nor go at all in a wheel-carriage, keeping myself as quiet as I could, until I should be obliged to go to parliament. Just before I left the country, Mr. Ranby made me a visit; and although I had felt no pain nor symptom of my disease for some time, he advised me not to hazard going to town by any means, unless it were in a litter. However, having caused an easy voiture to be made, I undertook the journey in it the 20 of November 1748, which was regulated by the horses going no faster than a gentle walk, and but twenty miles a day. The cold weather, and the tediousness of creeping so slow, made the coachman sometimes fall into a trot, which I perceived, but finding no inconvenience, did not check his pace. The set stages were observed, but the last two days, and particularly the last day, the coachman drove from Harlow to Whitechapel as full a trot as the horses could well go at any time; and I felt not the least disorder. I took a chair at Whitechapel, and all that winter made use of nothing else, and continued extremely well; but, about two months after my coming to town, I found some some small uneasiness in making water, and in two or three days I voided with my urine something of a flat shape about the bigness of a silver penny, cover'd with a soft white mucus, which, when it was dry, was plainly of a stony substance; and after that have never been troubled with the least symptom of that cruel disorder; and I found myself so well in the country last year, that, contrary to the advice of all my friends, I undertook in my coach a journey to Chatworth in Derbyshire from my house in the country, at least 160 miles, to pay a visit to the Duke of Devonshire, the horses going as round a trot as they could conveniently, according to the road; and the last 10 or rather 15 miles, from Hardwicke to Chatworth, a most rugged and rocky way, we neither spared ourselves nor our horses; and the great shocks upon the stones broke the springs of my coach, but gave me not the least uneasiness, and I have ever since continued with respect to my former disorder, as well as ever I was in my life; but I have now-and-then voided, after I have sat a great while in the House of Commons, some red gravel. As I never perceived, that I voided during my illness any flecks of a stone, besides that one, which I have mentioned above, and was never searched by an instrument; I can no otherwise pronounce it to be the stone, unless by the symptoms, which I felt, and the judgment of the surgeon and apothecary, who attended me, from these symptoms. But it is very remarkable, as I said before, that I never felt those symptoms, while I lay in bed, and not to so great a degree upon my couch, as upon my legs; which looks as if the posture made a great alteration. And that methinks could not be the case, the case, if I had been troubled with only a scorbutic corrosive humour. I must leave it to the learned in physic, to make what conclusions they think fit from this true state of my case. I think I remember in some of Dr. Whytt's observations, that if the medicine would not break or bring away the stone, it might cover it with a soft velvet coat, so as to blunt the edge of it, and keep it from vulnerating any part of the bladder. This may probably be my case, if I have still a stone there; and therefore I continue to take daily a third part of the soap and lime-water, which I used, when I took the full quantity. X. Extract of the Observations made in Italy, by the Abbé Nollet, F. R. S. on the Grotta de Cani. Translated from the French by Tho. Stack, M. D. F. R. S. Read Jan. 24, 1750. This cavern, known so long a time, and celebrated by so many writers, was probably called La Grotta de Cani, because it is commonly on this species of animals, that experiments are made for the curious, who visit it. It lies in the side of a little hill on the eastern border of the Lago di Agnano, between Naples and Pozzuolo. It is not suffer'd to stand open, but is under the care of a man, who, at about an hundred yards from it, keeps a natural stove*, that is, a small building, level with the * Stofe di San Germano.