Liquid Knowledge. The rise of uroscopy in medieval Byzantine and Arabic medicine

The visual inspection of urine is over 4000 years old. It is still practised today in traditional medical systems and even, sometimes, in modern medicine. In Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages it became the central diagnostic method. We will answer how and why it gained such prominence: we will study and translate many little known late-antique and medieval written sources and offer a broad understanding of a truly extraordinary scientific phenomenon, which from its ancient Greek beginnings came to dominate diagnostic care in East and West. This highly original project will create the first ever comprehensive survey of the many late-antique and medieval uroscopic writings (6th to 12th cents. CE) in the most important medical traditions at the time, Arabic and Byzantine Greek. We will compile an extensive digital corpus of Greek and Arabic texts which will enable us to trace the development and spread of uroscopic ideas within and between languages and illustrate how uroscopy came to dominate. Our editions, translations and studies of key texts will make this lost part of medical history available to scholars, medical professionals and the general public for the first time.