Scientists discover drops of truth in medieval belief in urine - The Times 21st April 2008

Medieval physicians believed that they could diagnose disease by holding up a flask of the patient’s urine to the light and squinting at it. According to scientists at Imperial College London, they could have been on to something. A team there has completed the first worldwide study of the metabolites (breakdown products) that are found in urine, reflecting the diet, inheritance and the lifestyle of the people from whom it came. They call such studies “metabolomics” by analogy with genomics, which looks at all the genes that make up the human species, and proteomics, which does the same for proteins.

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