Pierre Franco of Lausanne, in 1561, following a failed perineal lithotomy in a two-year-old child, sucessfully removed a stone suprapubically but, wary of Hippocrates' rule that all abdominal bladder wounds were fatal, warned against subsequent attempts.
Francis Rosset of Montpelier described and practised the operation on a dead body in 1590.
John Douglas, Surgeon and Lithotomist to the Infirmary at Westminster, and brother of James Douglas, the renowned anatomist who described the peritoneum, realised that a full bladder could be safely opened below the peritoneal reflection. He devised his 'New Operation' in 1719 and published it in 1723.
William Cheselden, after being taught by Douglas, also published the method in his “Treatise on the High Operation” in 1723 but credited John Douglas as the first man to practise the high operation upon living bodies.
Cheselden filled the bladder with warm barley water, connecting the syringe to the catheter by an ox's ureter and used three knives, a convex round-edged for the integument, a straight-edged to lay the bladder bare and a curved sharp-pointed concave one to open it.
He soon abandoned the High Approach to concentrate on improving the Lateral Method.
