What Could Your Urine Tell a Medieval Doctor?

In modern medicine, urine samples are routinely examined in laboratories to obtain clinical information about a patient. This procedure, known as urinalysis, developed from an ancient medical process called uroscopy. Although mostly discredited today, doctors used to use a urine wheel to diagnose illnesses up until the middle of the 19th century.

While uroscopy may be traced back to the ancient Greek and Roman periods, it was only during the Middle Ages that it became a significant method of medical examination. Urology was greatly aided during this period by the development of the urine wheel. In essence, this was a chart (in the form of a wheel) which helped the medieval physician in his diagnosis of a patient’s illness.

A urine wheel (Shoricelu/AdobeStock)

The urine wheel is divided into 20 different parts, each of which shows a different color of urine. In addition to observing the urine, it may be assumed that the physicians of the Middle Ages also relied on their sense of taste and smell, as the taste and smell of a patient’s urine were affected by the illness they were suffering from, and generally corresponded with specific colors.

The 17th century English physician Thomas Willis noted that the urine of a diabetic patient tasted “wonderfully sweet as if it were imbued with honey or sugar.” It was Willis who coined the term ‘mellitus’ (meaning ‘sweetened with honey’) in diabetes mellitus, and this disorder was once known as ‘Willis’s disease’.