Woodcut uroscopy diagnostic chart, printed at the private press of Ulrich Pinder, physician to the City of Nuremberg, ca. 1506.

Featured on PDR in the essay Troubled Waters: Reading Urine in Medieval Medicine

From cabbage green to coarse meal, medieval manuscripts exhibit a spectrum of colours and consistencies when describing urine. Katherine Harvey examines the complex practices of uroscopy: how physicians could divine sexual history, disease, and impending death by studying the body's liquid excretions.