Cutting for stone in the seventeenth century
Artist's impression of Susrutha doing an operation Stones in the urinary tract have been a part of life for humans for all of recorded history. The earliest treatments for the condition originated in India when Susrutha, the undisputed father of Plastic Surgery described a method of lithotomy of cutting for stone. There is some dispute about when exactly Susrutha lived. There are some over patriotic Indian authors who believe that he lived around 3000 B C. Colonial historians who were reluctant to believe that everything did not originate in the West or near about placed him at the end of the first millennium in the Common Era. However most sober scholars place him at about 600 BC which makes him roughly contemporaneous (give or take a century of two), with the Buddha and Mahavira. Susrutha described perineal lithotomy. This method was described in Ashmari Chikitsa (roughly translated as Management of vesical stones). The method has been described as follows: “First, the ...