Certain indications of the health are furnished by the urine. Thus, for example, if it is white at first in the morning and afterwards high-coloured, the first signifies that the digestion is going on, the last that it is completed. When the urine is red, it is a bad sign; but when it is swarthy, it is the worst sign of all. So, too, when it is thick or full of bubbles, it is a bad sign; and when a white sediment forms, it is a symptom of pains in the region of the viscera or in the joints. A green-coloured urine is indicative of disease of the viscera, a pale urine of biliousness, and a red urine of some distemper in the blood. The urine is in a bad state, too, when certain objects form in it, like bran or fine clouds in appearance. A thin, white, urine also is in a diseased state; but when it is thick and possessed of an offensive smell, it is significant of approaching death: so, too, when with children it is thin and watery.

The adepts in magic expressly forbid a person, when about to make water, to uncover the body in the face of the sun[1] or moon, or to sprinkle with his urine the shadow of any object whatsoever. Hesiod[2] gives a precept, recommending persons to make water against an object standing full before them, that no divinity may be offended by their nakedness being uncovered. Osthanes maintains that every one who drops some urine upon his foot in the morning will be proof against all noxious medicaments.