In today’s society, humans are impatient. Since everything is available at the push of a button, they find it difficult to wait for anything, let alone time-consuming medical tests. Sometimes it is difficult to remember that everything currently available was created through thousands of years of experimentation. There are many tests that have been refined over the years; one of which is urinalysis.
Physicians in the seventeenth century practiced uroscopy, known as urinalysis today. They believed that urine was the window into the body, and that every ailment could be determined simply by looking at the colour, clarity, and sometimes taste (Armstrong, 2007). Clay tablets from 4000 BC have been found containing logs from different patient’s urine samples and the subsequent diseases that they were diagnosed with (Armstrong, 2007). The first chart describing the different kinds of urine and their associated ailments was created in 100 BC by the Sanskrit medical works, it included over 20 different colours and smells of urine (Armstrong, 2007).
The physicians of this time believed that the body was affected by four main humours, which were filtered through the kidneys and excreted: blood, phlegm, yellow bile, and black bile (Simerville, Maxted and Pahira, 2005). These come from different areas of the body and as long as they were all balanced, then individuals were healthy and that would show itself in their urine. Hindu cultures showed that people who had diabetes mellitus had much sweeter urine than healthy people due to the excreted glucose. They discovered this by placing drops of urine on the ground. Black ants would come and remove the urine droplet of those who were sick as it tasted sweet (Armstrong, 2007).
To accomplish urine tests, the physicians would place samples into matulas, which were containers made of thin glass, rounded at the bottom and resembled the shape of the bladder. It was thought that if the urine was in the same environment as it was in the body then it could not be contaminated by the sun or altered heavily before the time where it was analyzed (Armstrong, 2007). The doctors would wear long robes and examine the matulas under the light before diagnosing their patients with various ailments. This was meant to instill confidence and impress the patients (Jasin, 1993).
These many methods were often inaccurate as it was very easy to misinterpret a colour or smell of the urine. This, in turn, provided incorrect results to the patient. Over the years, these methods have been refined and although urinalysis has taken a smaller component in testing for disease, it is still an important factor and provides important information. In today’s society urine can be used to test whether a person will be likely to develop kidney stones. Through a chemical process known as capillary electrophoresis, samples of urine are tested for sulphate levels, as patients with kidney stones have shown to have much lower levels of this in their urine (de Macedo et al., 2013).
There is no definitive knowledge of where medical testing will go in the future, but the human race has done an incredible job thus far of refining the scientific process of many different testing methods. Urinalysis is only one of many. Next time you are at the doctor’s office waiting for a result, take a second to consider how many minds it took to get where our health testing is today.
References
Armstrong, J.A., 2007. Urinalysis in Western culture: a brief history. Kidney International, 71(5), pp.384–387.
Jasin, J., 1993. The transmission of learned medical literature in the middle English Liber uricrisiarum. Medical History, 37(3), pp.313–329.
De Macedo, A.N. et al., 2013. Strong anion determination in biological fluids by capillary electrophoresis for clinical diagnostics. Analytical Chemistry, 85(22), pp.11112–11120.
Simerville, J.A., Maxted, W.C. and Pahira, J.J., 2005. Urinalysis: a comprehensive review. American Family Physician, 71(6), pp.1153–1162.