Matulas have been used since the Middle Ages. These small vials, as Mauro Salernitano explains in his work Regulae urinarum, were used to collect urine from patients for later study. Doctors could thus analyze four components: circle, surface, substance and background.
At a time when the microscope had not yet been invented (Galileo Galilei built the first one in 1609), doctors could only study urea by looking at its color, sedimentation, smell, and even taste, treatises of the time explain. And these practices were maintained for hundreds of years between the Middle Ages and the Renaissance.
This is confirmed by a recent excavation of a dump discovered in Rome that is full of ancient medical supplies, including medicine bottles and urine from 500 years ago, according to the researchers in an article published in the journal Antiquity.
This 16th century medical waste dump was found a few months ago inside the Forum dedicated to Julius Caesar, built in 46 BC. A millennium later, however, the area was used by a bakers' guild to build a hospital, the Ospedale dei Fornari.
During their work, the archaeologists discovered a Renaissance cistern filled with ceramic vessels, rosaries, broken glass jars, and personal items such as coins and a ceramic figurine of a camel. His hypothesis is that many of these objects were related to the daily care of patients.
Each person admitted to the hospital would have received their own "welcome basket" with a pitcher, glass, bowl and plate as a hygiene measure, the researchers note. It is likely that more than half of the glass vessels recovered are what medieval medical texts call a matula.
During the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, the practice of uroscopy was a central diagnostic tool for physicians and was extremely thorough. From the analysis of the urine, the doctors dared to give a prognosis about the disease that each patient was suffering from.
Such practices could shed light on whether sufferers had conditions such as jaundice, kidney disease, or even diabetes, since diabetics' urine often smells and tastes sweet due to excess glucose. These urine jars are difficult to identify because their shape is similar to oil lamps, and they are rare in contexts other than hospital garbage cans.
Lead clamps from furniture fittings made from charred or fire-treated wood were also found in the cistern. These objects may be evidence of a historically known hygienic measure: the burning of houses in which cases of plague had appeared.
The Italian doctor Quinto Tiberio Angelerio proposed, in the treatise Ectypa Pestilentis Status Algheriae Sardiniae written in 1588, this and another series of rules to prevent the spread of a disease. Ideas such as social distancing or confinement at home, so fashionable with the Covid-19 pandemic.
When the Ospedale dei Fornari landfill was filled, it was covered with a layer of clay, possibly for hygienic reasons, the study authors write. Although garbage cans existed outside the walls of Rome, it was a common practice in the city to deposit waste in cellars, patios and cisterns, although they were prohibited.
