lithotome

plural lithotomes

1. archaicmedicineAn instrument used for cutting the bladder to remove a calculus; a cystotome.
2. A mineral resembling a cut gem, formed that way by nature.

   You know I'm something of a lithologist and I find the character and the science of the stones most interesting. I have seen some wonderful lithotomes about, too.

   1913, Anna Mooney Doling, Brilla, page 112

   3 more examples

   On the walls of these stupendous structures is written and sculptured the history, as well as the religion, of Egypt, from Osirtasen I., who reigned four thousand five hundred years ago, down to the Roman Augustus: these are the earliest and the latest names inscribed on the lithotomes of Karnak.

   1873, Foster Barham Zincke, Egypt of the Pharaohs and of the Khedivé, page 128

   The marble books of Egypt, the lithotomes and chiselled pictures of Assyria, are stamped with the minutest details of life—of busy, active, cultivated life, that was powerful in its day, and wrought mighty changes, and achieved mighty conquests in the almost forgotten ages of the long, long past.

   1875, Thomas E. Thoresby, The Free Church of England Magazine, page 73

   High, polygonal rock columns present the appearance of giant, sculpted lithotomes, of being formed by man rather than by nature, but now in process of slow decay, with pillar, slope of talus and canyon giving refuge to fauna and rare flora in the interstices.

   1969, Edgar Dorsey Taylor, Baja California Woodcuts, page 49