History of urinalysis

Abstract

Urine is a very important fluid that is made and excreted by the human body. The earliestmention of its use as an indicator of diseases comes from the paleolithic era. Urine wasdescribed in Sumerian and Babylonian clay tablets that date back 6000 years. In ancient times,Hippocrates was one of the pioneers of urinalysis and he claimed that urine was derived fromthe four body humors. Galen was the first to define urine as blood filtrate. Byzantine medicalwriter Theophilus undermined previous assumptions and created an algorithm for the evaluationof the clinical condition using urine. The invention of magnifying lenses led to the creation anduse of them in the first microscopes, which allowed the assessment of urine sediment. At theend of XIX century brought us the Atlas of the Urinary Sediment with particular emphasis on theirclinical morphology of urine. During this period, the development of dry chemistry also tookplace, which allowed for the simplification, acceleration, and greater availability of the test. Afterthe great successes of the nineteenth-century researchers, the development of urine testinggained a rapid pace in the twentieth century. In the 1950s testing strips became widely available.Progressive automation has led to the widespread use of analyzers that semi-quantitativelyassess the content of the test substance in the urine by reading the color intensity in the reactionfields. Currently, analyzers are available that, in addition to physicochemical properties, also havethe ability to evaluate structured elements in urine.