FRUIT-Stones. The mischiefs arising from the custom which many people have of swallowing the stones of plums and other fruit are very great. The Philosophical Transactions give an account of a woman who suffered violent pains in her bowels for 30 years, returning once in a month or less. At length, a strong purge being given her, the occasion of all these complaints was driven down from the bowels to the anus; where it gave a sensation of distension and stoppage, producing a continual desire of going to stool, but without voiding any thing. On the assistance of a careful hand in this case, there was taken out with a forceps a ball of an oval figure, of about ten drachms in weight, and measuring five inches in circumference. This had caused all the violent fits of pain which she had suffered for so many years; and, after voiding it, she became perfectly well. The ball extracted looked like a stone, and felt very hard, but it swam in water. On cutting it through with a knife, there was found in the centre of it a plum stone; round which several coats of this hard and tough matter had gathered. Another instance given in the same papers is of a man, who, dying of an incurable colic which had tormented him many years, and baffled the effects of medicines, was opened after death; and in his bowels was found a ball similar to that above mentioned; but somewhat larger, being six inches in circumference, and weighing an ounce and a half. In the centre of this, as of the other, there was found the stone of a common plum, and the coats were of the same nature with those of the former.
These and several other instances mentioned in the same place, sufficiently show the folly of that common opinion that the stones of fruits are wholesome. For though by nature the guts are so defended by their proper mucus, that people very seldom suffer by things of this kind; yet if we consider the various circumvolutions of the guts, their valves and cells, and at the same time consider the hair of the skins of animals we feed on, the wool or down on herbs and fruit, and the fibres, vessels, and nerves of plants, which are not altered by the stomach; it will appear a wonder that instances of this sort of mischief are not much more common. Cherry stones, swallowed in great quantities, have occasioned the death of many people; and there have been instances even of the seeds of strawberries collecting into a lump in the guts, and causing violent disorders, which could not be cured without great difficulty.