[1] The presence of specialist lithotomists is described by Hippocrates, and is also included in the famous Hippocratic Oath: "I will not cut for stone, even for the patients in whom the disease is manifest; I will leave this operation to be performed by practitioners," a clear warning for physicians against the "cutting" of persons "laboring under the stone"; an act that was better left to surgeons, as distinct from physicians.

Lithotomy at the time involved operations to remove bladder stones via the perineum; like other surgery before the invention of anesthesia, these were intensely painful for the patient, and since antibiotics were not yet available, often resulted in deadly infection and inflammation as well.

[1] Aulus Cornelius Celsus (1st century), and the Hindu surgeon Susruta produced early descriptions of bladder stone treatment using perineal lithotomy.

[12] A less invasive technique was described by Ottoman surgeons Sabuncuoğlu Serafettin and Ahi Ahmed Celebi in the sixteenth century, involving accessing the bladder through the urethra, and then washing it with fluid.

Other important names in its historical development were Jean Zuléma Amussat (1796–1856), Auguste Nélaton (1807–1873), Henry Thompson (1820–1904) and William Cheselden (1688–1752).

)[13] The records of his work, published by his colleague, John Middleton, M.D., prove that his experience in the operation and his success were greater than any contemporary English surgeon could show.

Transurethral lithotripsy, which was much simpler and with lower morbidity, complication and mortality rates, was invented by French surgeon Jean Civiale (1792–1867) and largely substituted for surgical lithotomy, unless the crushing of calculi was difficult or impossible.