Stone in the urinary tract has fascinated the medical profession from the earliest times and has played an important part in the development of surgery. The earliest major planned operations were for the removal of vesical calculus; renal and ureteric calculi provided the first stimulus for the radiological investigation of the viscera, and the biochemical investigation of the causes of calculus formation has been the training ground for surgeons interested in metabolic disorders. It is therefore no surprise that stone has been the subject of a number of monographs by eminent urologists, but...