A 2000-Year-Old Bladder Stone from Győr, Hungary: Results of Chemical Compositional and Non-Destructive Structural Analysis

A biological object was recovered from the pelvic region of an adult man (age 60) unearthed from Győr, Újlak utca Hungary. The skeleton was dated to the Roman period based on the burial customs and stratigraphic position. The find was identified as a bladder stone on morphological, radiographic, and chemo-analytical grounds with the help of traditional lab tests, X-ray diffraction, confocal Raman spectroscopy, and microscopic techniques. The mineralogical composition of this urinary stone was found to be calcium phosphate (apatite) and calcium magnesium phosphate (whitlockite). Bladder stone disease is endemic in poor agricultural regions where the typical diet is mostly based on grain carbohydrate consumption with scarce intake of animal protein. However, in our case the absence of skeletal alterations related to neurogenic origin, and the results of investigations carried out on a multidisciplinary approach, esspecially the presence of whitlockite clearly indicates infection by non-urease producing bacteria.