ABSTRACT
Uroscopy enjoyed a secure place in the diagnostic practice of physicians as well. But by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries this place had changed significantly, as is evidenced by medical writings. Leading medical writers now also emphasized the limitations of uroscopic diagnosis and cautioned their readers against placing too much trust in it. While uroscopy in the Middle Ages was still extolled as the foundation of medical authority, it now appeared too many physicians as one of the greatest threats to their professional standing. Another promising attempt to refine uroscopy, and to make it again the exclusive domain of physicians, was linked to the introduction of microscopes. Anatomy might be far less useful for the diagnosis and treatment of illnesses compared to uroscopy, but it gave back to academic medicine that authority, that exclusivity of knowledge, which uroscopy seemed to have once secured for it.
