The Book of Urine

Chapter 5

[As Hippocrates affirmed in his letters:] If the digestion increases, the urine necessarily diminishes; and vice versa, if the urine increases, the digestion must diminish. Urine [emitted] in average quantity, between paucity and abundance, is a sign of a balanced complexion of the body, of temperateness of the power of natural heat and of the action of nature according to its [right] course.

The qualities of urine are 4: odor, taste, color, condition of the liquid.

The odor [may be] from outside or from inside. [Odors] from outside [include] food having a strong odor and overpowering the smell of the urine, like cabbage, asparagus, fennel, fenugreek and so on; [odors] from inside [include] sharp [odor that] denotes burning and bilious humors, or [odor coming] from bad-smelling humors, or from bile mixed with urine, nevertheless not burned.

The taste [may be] bitter, denoting strength of the red bile and its descent with the urine; or sour, a sign of acidity of the phlegm dominated by the coldness and moisture; or salty, a sign of saltiness of the phlegm.

The color of the urine is generally divided into two [types], natural and non-natural. The natural [type] is temperate and is the medium between the colors of the 4 humors, so that the qualities of one single color do not dominate, which could push it off its balance. This color is a yellow, which is between citrine yellow and fiery yellow. Indeed the citrine yellow indicates that nature has completed the concoction in the urine, and it [=the urine] has mixed into itself a moderate quantity of biliary substance.

The fiery [color] is a sign of urine mixed with the watery and the excellent [parts] of the blood. Therefore both these colors are close to moderation and balance because of the strength of the action of natural heat and [because of] the middle position occupied by them between the two colors situated at the extremities, namely the white and the black. From this, it necessarily follows that the color that lies between these two is more temperate, more reliable, more worthy and more indicative of sound complexion. If a little of these qualities is exceeded, it is good when the red is similar to the fiery as it is a sign of the watery part of the blood [being] mixed with urine. Blood is more praiseworthy than the other humors, and [a]‌ friend of nature. [ . . . ]

The causes of the diversity of natural color in the urine, when some is citrine yellow or clear, some citrine yellow or fiery, are known to be five; they are the differences in the human nature: age, complexion, food, exercising, accidents from outside the body.