From ‘stone cutting’ to high-technology methods: The changing face of stone surgery

The surgical management of urolithiasis, in particular cystoli-thiasis, has been known for more than two millennia. The term lithotomy was first used by the Greek surgeon Ammonius (276 BCE), but the practice of cutting the stone would have ex-isted long before that. However, Hippocrates (460 BCE) dis-couraged the procedure. His oath reads: ‘I will not cut persons labouring under the stone, but will leave this to be done by practitioners of this work’. Most probably he wished to dis-associate himself from this frequently unsuccessful procedure, in an attempt to prevent it from tarnishing the physicians’ reputation.