Has the frequency of bladder stones changed over the centuries?

November 22, 2019 10:27 PM

Bladder stones show up all over the literature and history of medicine. As far as I can tell in the past hundred years or so, they don't show up much at all. Has the frequency of them changed, or is this a matter of them being something that could be dealt with before modern medicine and thus people actually talked about it? If the frequency has changed, what in our dietary habit or personal care caused the change?

Hypocrites wrote about not cutting for them. I read about a horrific account where an incompetent surgeon in Britain in the 1800s spent close to an hour trying to remove one from an unanesthetized man, who died soon after (the man was chased out of the profession and sued). Benjamin Franklin wrote about having one. I'm a fan of medical history, at least from a pop-science level, and they seem to show up all over the place.

Most sources I've found attribute bladder stones (in the modern era) to insufficient water combined with other factors. Were people before the modern era just dehydrated all the time? I ran into one author remarking that repeated UTIs caused by not bathing caused them, but that feels like a lazy "medieval people didn't bathe" explanation.

If you know of any sources on this that I can read up on (pop science, academic or whatever- I can get to closed journal articles if need be) that'd be fantastic.

posted by Hactar to Health & Fitness (4 answers total)

Best answer: "Bladder stones almost exclusively affect middle-aged and older men, but, for unknown reasons, are becoming increasingly rare." So it's mentioned there, but yeah I can see it's difficult to find articles that discuss/speculate WHY rather than medical sites that tell you what to do if you have stones.

My guess is that modern diets are part of it, as well as modern bathrooms. Maybe public pees are cut short due to embarrassment, leading to the half empty bladder which causes stones?

Sorry to just provide more speculation.
posted by freethefeet at 2:16 AM on November 23, 2019

Best answer: According to “Under the knife, a history of surgery in 28 remarkable operations”, bladder stones are a result of bacteria and are a result of poor hygiene. He attributes the decrease in infection to better access to plentiful clean water, more frequent bathing, and more frequent washing on underwear.
posted by Comrade_robot at 5:48 AM on November 23, 2019 [2 favorites]

Best answer: Before diagnostic imaging it might have been quite hard to tell a kidney stone from a bladder stone. If the kidney was not sensitive to palpation the doctor may have frequently diagnosed bladder stones where we would now diagnose kidney stones. In both cases they often come to the patient and the professionals attention when they need to pass through the urethra.

Bladder stones frequently occur in men due to obstruction in the prostate. If you get your early symptoms of prostate enlargement treated and monitored you can avoid bladder stones. Simply treating UTI's with antibiotics means that you will reduce the incidence of the bladder stones in both genders. Soft catheters also make a difference.
posted by Jane the Brown at 8:15 AM on November 23, 2019 [1 favorite]

Incidence of disease change over time. Hyperthyroidism in cats was almost unheard of until about 40 years ago, and now it's very common. The cause of the epidemic is probably environmental, with fire retardants being suspected.
posted by alex1965 at 8:17 AM on November 23, 2019 [1 favorite]