Uroscopy is the historical medical practice of visually examining a patient's urine for pus, blood, or other symptoms of disease. The first records of uroscopy as a method for determining symptoms of an illness date back to the 4th millennium BC, and became common practice in Classical Greece. Later reaching medical predominance during the Byzantine Era & High Middle Ages, the practice eventually was replaced with more accurate methods during the early modern period, with uroscopy being considered inadequate due to the lack of empirical evidence and higher standards of post-Renaissance medicine. In modern medicine, visual examination of a patient's urine may provide preliminary evidence for a diagnosis, but is generally limited to conditions that specifically affect the urinary system such as urinary tract infections, kidney and bladder issues, and liver failure. History Records of urinalysis for uroscopy date back as far as 4000 BC, originating with Babylonian and Sumerian physicians. At the outset of the 4th century BC Greek physician Hippocrates hypothesized that urine was a "filtrate" of the four humors, and limited possible the diagnoses resulting from this method to issues dealing with the bladder, kidneys, and urethra. This in turn led another Greek physician, Galen, to refine the idea down to urine being a filtrate of only blood, and not of black bile, yellow bile, or phlegm. Byzantine medicine followed, though it maintained its roots from Greco-Roman antiquity, and continued the application and study of uroscopy – it eventually becoming the primary form of ailment diagnosis. Byzantine physicians created some of the foundational codifications of uroscopy, with the most well known example being a 7th-century guide on uroscopic methods: Theophilus Protospatharius's On Urines. The work, along with others, became widely popular and accelerated the rate at which uroscopy spread throughout the Mediterranean. Over time these Byzantine works inspired further interpretation by other prominent culture's scholars (like the Arab Jewish Isaac Israeli ben Solomon and his urine-hue classification chart), though greater propagation led to a widened application of uroscopy and eventually uroscopic diagnoses of non-urinary related diseases and infections became standard. Pivotal in the spread of uroscopy, Constantine the African's Latin translations of Byzantine and Arab texts inspired a new era in uroscopic interest specifically in western Europe throughout the High Middle Ages. Despite this popularization, uroscopy was still mostly maintained by the principals Hippocrates's and Galen's first postulated, aided by Byzantine interpretations that were further disseminated during