Glucosuria – trick or treatment?
The color and odor, quantity, clarity & viscosity, foaminess, saltiness & sweetness of one’s urine was once ample information to determine the flaws in our personal well-being, summarized in the acronym of a modern shoe; ASICS.
Anima sana in corpore sano. Both soul and body were represented in our clear-golden liquid.
1 A particular disease, diagnosed spot-on through this method, is one of the oldest medical entities ever described.
2 Already in 1500 AD, an Egyptian manuscript mentions an epithetical name; too great emptying of the urine. This emptying, defined in 230 AD by the Greek Apollonius of Memphis as
διαβήτης (diabetes), “to pass through” (dia – through, betes – to go), was sufficient to characterize the condition for centuries.
3 Only in 1675, when Thomas Willis, known for his discovery of the arterial circle in our brain, coined in his
Pharmaceutice rationalis the term
mellitus, “honey-like”, to differentiate between
mellitus and
insipidus, “tasteless”, the name diabetes mellitus emerged as a clinical condition.
4 The doctor’s trick for diagnosis was simply to taste the urine.