(1) Early Hindu surgeons performed advanced eye operations and practised lithotomy (surgical removal of a stone from the urinary tract) and plastic surgery.(2) Cheselden at St Thomas's introduced the keeping of accurate records that enabled him to analyse the morbidity and mortality of his lithotomy operation for bladder stones.(3) In passing, until the advent of anaesthetics and antisepsis about 200 years later, the only internal operation generally undertaken was removal of bladder stones, or lithotomy as it was called.(4) Being one of those few operations where the surgeon can place in the patient's hand the fruits of his labour, in truth most lithotomists kept a spare stone on their person to bamboozle the wrong out patient in case of failure.
