Detail of a miniature depicting the bedridden John, Duke of Normandy, and physicians examining his urine, ca. 1380–1400.
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.