How big was Pepys's bladder stone? disputed

Positions

1. As big as a tennis ball

   A common description, repeated on Wikipedia, which notes that the comparison is with a real-tennis ball, a little smaller than a lawn-tennis ball.

   Sources

   1. Wikipedia, Samuel Pepys (including its footnote on the autopsy) Secondary

2. About two inches across

   Hektoen International gives a diameter of about two inches.

   Sources

   1. Hektoen International, essay on Pepys's operation for stone Secondary

3. The comparison is unsupported

   William Matthews, editor of the diary, disputed the tennis-ball comparison in 1970.

   Sources

   1. Matthews 1970, Pepys's pain (letter, New York Review of Books) Secondary

Evidence

As far as the kit checked, the tennis-ball phrase does not come from Pepys's diary. The diary records the operation, the annual feast and the 24-shilling case for the stone, but the kit found no measurement in his own hand.

Current standing

Unresolved. The film gives no size and shows the stone only in its case. A safe wording is "a stone said to be as big as a tennis ball".

All sources