[f. LITHO- + Gr. -κλάστης breaker, f. κλᾷν to break.]
† 1. A stone-breaker. Obs. rare–1.
1829. Burckhardt, Trav. Arabia, I. 307. A party of horsemen … were ready … to assist the lithoclast, as soon as he should have executed his task.
2. Surg. An instrument for breaking up stone in the bladder.
1847. South, trans. Chelius’ Surg., II. 569. The perforating instruments … have been set aside by Jacobson’s lithoclast.
1882. Sir H. Thompson, Dis. Urinary Organs, xii. (ed. 6), 81. Urethral lithoclasts.
Hence Lithoclastic a., pertaining to the lithoclast or to lithoclasty; Lithoclasty [cf. F. lithoclastie], ‘the reduction of a vesical calculus into fragments by the aid of the lithoclast’ (Syd. Soc. Lex., 1889).
