Urinalysis in western culture: A brief history

Abstract

Today physicians use urine to diagnose selective conditions but from ancient times until the Victorian era, urine was used as the primary diagnostic tool. Laboratory medicine began with the analysis of human urine, which was called uroscopy and today is termed urinalysis. Uroscopy was the mirror of medicine for thousands of years. From a liquid window through which physicians felt they could view the body's inner workings. Numerous, somewhat accurate, physiologic theories arose from uroscopy. Then the importance of urinary diagnosis became exaggerated, and increasingly complex, until physicians required only the presence of urine, not patients, to diagnose disease. Uroscopy then escaped medical control, becoming first a home health aid and then a tool of uneducated practitioners. Thomas Brian led a medical rebellion against all uses of uroscopy and published the Pisse Prophet, a book that devastated uroscopy. © 2007 International Society of Nephrology.