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 sources read here show, 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 no measurement in his own hand was found.

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