Editing Kidney stone disease (section)

== History ==
{{See also|List of kidney stone formers}}
The existence of kidney stones was first recorded thousands of years ago, with various explanations given; Joseph Glanville's ''[[Saducismus Triumphatus]],'' for example, gives a detailed description of Abraham Mechelburg's voiding of small stones through his penis' virga, attributing the issue to witchcraft.<ref>{{cite book |last=Glanvill |first=Joseph |url=http://worldcat.org/oclc/943229347 |title=Saducismus triumphatus, or, Full and plain evidence concerning witches and apparitions : in two parts, the first treating of their possibility, the second of their real existence |isbn=1-171-33286-6 |oclc=943229347}}</ref>

In 1901, a stone discovered in the [[pelvis]] of an ancient Egyptian [[mummy]] was dated to 4,800&nbsp;BC.

Medical texts from ancient [[Mesopotamia]], [[History of India|India]], [[History of China|China]], [[Achaemenid Empire|Persia]], [[Ancient Greece|Greece]], and [[Ancient Rome|Rome]] all mentioned calculous disease. Part of the [[Hippocratic Oath]] suggests there were practicing surgeons in ancient Greece to whom physicians were to defer for [[Lithotomy|lithotomies]], or the surgical removal of stones. The Roman medical treatise ''[[De Medicina]]'' by [[Aulus Cornelius Celsus]] contained a description of lithotomy,<ref name="Collier1831" /> and this work served as the basis for this procedure until the 18th century.<ref name="Shah2002" />

Examples of people who had kidney stone disease include [[Napoleon]] I, [[Epicurus]], [[Napoleon III]], [[Peter the Great]], [[Louis XIV of France|Louis XIV]], [[George IV of the United Kingdom|George IV]], [[Oliver Cromwell]], [[Lyndon B. Johnson]], [[Benjamin Franklin]], [[Michel de Montaigne]], [[Francis Bacon]], [[Isaac Newton]], [[Samuel Pepys]], [[William Harvey]], [[Herman Boerhaave]], and [[Antonio Scarpa]].<ref name=Ellis1969 />

New techniques in lithotomy began to emerge starting in 1520, but the operation remained risky. After [[Henry Jacob Bigelow]] popularized the technique of [[litholapaxy]] in 1878,<ref name=Bigelow1878 /> the [[mortality rate]] dropped from about 24% to 2.4%. However, other treatment techniques continued to produce a high level of mortality, especially among inexperienced urologists.<ref name=Shah2002 /><ref name=Ellis1969 /> In 1980, [[Dornier Flugzeugwerke|Dornier MedTech]] introduced extracorporeal shock wave lithotripsy for breaking up stones via acoustical pulses, and this technique has since come into widespread use.<ref name=AUA2009 />

=== Etymology ===
The term ''renal calculus'' is from the [[Latin]] ''rēnēs'', meaning "kidneys", and ''[[Calculus (medicine)|calculus]]'', meaning "pebble". Lithiasis (stone formation) in the kidneys is called nephrolithiasis ({{IPAc-en|ˌ|n|ɛ|f|r|oʊ|l|ɪ|ˈ|θ|aɪ|ə|s|ᵻ|s}}), from ''[[wikt:nephro-|nephro]]-'', meaning kidney, + ''[[wikt:-lith|-lith]]'', meaning stone, and ''[[wikt:-iasis#Suffix|-iasis]]'', meaning disorder. A distinction between nephrolithiasis and urolithiasis can be made because not all urinary stones (uroliths) form in the kidney; they can also form in the bladder. But the distinction is often clinically irrelevant (with similar disease process and treatment either way) and the words are thus often used loosely as synonyms.