Telling the Future with Urine and Bones: the Lyricism of Urine Wheels

JF Ptak Science Books   Post 1820

For many centuries people have been trying to control the future, seeing into future’s past, using tea leaves, foreheads, palm prints, brain bumps, nose angles, the position of the stars, rolled animal bones and printed interpretations of the creator of the universe.  Some of these have faded into embarrassed obscurity, but only some; some methods are present today, stronger than ever. 

The rolled bones part of this makes the prettiest pictures, I think: for example, this image from Paul Pambst¹ (published in 1546) shows some of the dice combinations and what they would correspond to in the revolving paper disks and columns of interpretations in the body of the book, a simple throwing of shaped animal residue somehow laying claim to predictive power.  Not that it is much different from any of the other divination methods. 

One such method that had been in strong and continued use for thousands of years and is now mostly relegated to dust is the heated up and swirling inspection of urine.  It was thought for millenia that pee held secrets to what was going on inside the body, and that was mostly true, except that given the state of medical knowledge the only thing that the practioner could do with the sample was hold it up to the light and make good solid guesses on how color/consistency corresponded to the patient.  A reddish tint (as we see here in this painting by Gerrit Dou (1613-1675, and who made an appearance in yesterday’s post) might suggest that the (female) subject was suffering from morbens virginus (uterine hysteria, “a signifying of too much concoction in the body”), which, when the imaginary disease/unease was diagnosed would’ve led to lead consumption and a good bleeding.

 Moving slightly up the alpha from Pambst is Udalr Pinder, whose Epiphanie Medicorum…² (published in Nurnberg in 1506) is a state-of-the-art disposition on urine inspection, complete with this pee color wheel.  This idea is as interesting as it is entertaining, because at its base is a scientific aspect of trying to establish a common (color) base for discussion of specimens.  The color descriptions (taken in translation from Kirsten Jungersen’s  (MA, classical philologist, visiting scholar, Medical Museion, University of Copenhagen) “The relation between text and colours in medieval urine wheels” (here) are poetic, lyrical. They are also a small insight into common things of the 15^th century, the author selecting colors from things that were ubiquitous and known to everyone, and so in this way could be used as a basis for the common understanding of a given color. 

And so here are the glorious colors (complete in “extended reading” below with the Latin above), most of which I’ve never heard as descriptors…and would love to see as an adopted sub-there by Crayola (“Crayola Urine Wheel Colors”):

“Bluish-grey as camel skin; White as wellwater; Light blue/green/grey as lucid horn; Milky as whey of milk; Slightly pale as a not reduced juice of Meat; Pale yellow as of a not reduced lemon; Wine-red as of animal liver; Black as very dark horn; Ruddy as pure intense gold; Green as green cabbage.”  And of course:

“Slightly red as a lowered flame of fire”

and

“Red as a flame of fire not lowered”

 They’re lovely!

But of course none of this was actually going to help anyone very much, especially when you moved from uroscopy into urinomancy (not a word one gets to use very often), where instead of trying to diagnose dis-ease the urinomancer would try to diagnose the future.  Often heat was applied to the jar (matula) of urine, which would do, well, I don’t know what.  It certainly looks dramatic, and makes for some excellent opportunities for artists to discern candle-lit color and wonderful reflections (as in Dou).  Actually, it was in this way that the golden color of urine was determined (poor alchemists!) not to come from gold at all—urine was finally boiled away until its component urea was discovered (in 1773)³. So heat did have a real and important function, but it took hundreds of years to get there properly.

And so it goes that predicting the future with urine was swept into histories dark places, though somehow bone throwers and astrologers managed to escape this fate. 

Notes:
  1. Paul Pambst. Loozbuch zu ehren der Roemischen…published in Strassburg in 1546.  The Robert Sabuda website for popup books ahs a very good short essay on this book, here.

2. Epiphanie Medicorum. Speculum videndi urinas hominum. Clavis aperiendi portas pulsuum. Berillus discernendi causas & differentias febrium.

3.  H.M. Rouelle first discovered and isolated  1773, and then synthesized by Friedrich Woehler in 1828. This was big and important stuff.
 

Color Wheel Colors, continued below:

The colour captions include textual definitions:
 

Albus color ut aqua fontis

White as wellwater, i.e. clear

 

Glaucus color ut cornu lucidum

Light blue/green/grey as lucid horn

 

Lacteus color ut serum lactis

Milky as whey of milk

 

Caropos color ut vellus cameli

Bluish-grey as camel skin

 

Subpallidus color ut succus carnis semicoctus non remisse

Slightly pale as a not reduced juice of Meat

 

Remissus pallidus ut succus carnis semicoctus remissi

Reduced pale as reduced juice of Meat

 

Subcitrinus ut pomi subcitrini non remissus

Pale yellow as of a not reduced lemon

 

Citrinus color ut pomi citrini remissi

Yellow as of a reduced lemon

 

Subruffus color ut aurum remissum

Slightly ruddy as an alloy of gold

 

Ruffus ut aurum purum intensum

Ruddy as pure intense gold

 

Subrubicundus color ut crocus occidentalis

Slightly red as occidental saffron

 

Rubeus ut crocus orientalis

Red as oriental saffron

 

Subrubicundus ut flamma ignis remissa

Slightly red as a lowered flame of fire

 

Rubicundus ut flamma ignis non remissa

Red as a flame of fire not lowered

 

Inops color ut epatis animalis

Wine-red as of animal liver

 

Kyanos color ut vinum bene nigrum

Deep blue as very dark wine

 

Viridis color ut caulis viridis

Green as green cabbage

 

Lividus color ut plumbum

Livid as lead

Niger ut incaustum

Black as ink

 

Niger ut cornu bene nigrum

Black as very dark horn

Comments

[David Bimler]

Have you read Ralf Kuehni's histories of colour order systems? ("Color Ordered", "Color Space and Its Divisions"). He devotes a few pages to the genre of urine wheels and urine trees.
A less academic response here:
http://eusa-riddled.blogspot.co.nz/2010/02/sky-was-colour-of-urine-from-patient.html