The dangers arising from swallowing the stones of plums and other fruits are very great. The Philosophical Transactions give an acount of a woman who suffered violent pains in her bowels for thirty years, the malady returning once in a month or less. At length, a strong purge being given her, the occasion of all these complaints was discovered to be a stone of an oval figure, of about ten drams 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; after this, she became perfectly well. The ball extracted looked like a stone, and felt very hard, but swam in water. On cutting it through with a knife, there was found in the centre, a plum-stone, round which several coats of this hard and tough matter had gathered.

Another instance is given in the same papers, 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 similar instances mentioned in the same work, sufficiently show the folly of that common opinion, that the stones of fruits are wholesome. Even cherry stones, swallowed in great quantities, have occasioned death.