Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
the statutes of the College of Physicians of London declared, “It is ri-
diculous and stupid to attempt to interpret anything definite and certain
merely from inspection of the urine and by inference there from, whether
about the type and nature of the illness, or the state and condition of the
sufferer,” to which was later added “for that reason we desire and decree
that neither any Collegiate nor any candidate should, like the sly impos-
ter, use mere inspection of the urine in his consultation” (Connor 2001).
Physicians all over Europe published pamphlets and books, such as
Thomas Brian's
Pisse-Prophet
(London, 1637) and Johan Van Dueren's
De Ontdekking der Bedriegeryen Vande gemeene Pis-Besienders
(Am-
sterdam, 1688) (see Figure 4f) to denounce the quackery and fraud of
uroscopy practitioners. Of course, physicians continued to practice urine
inspection, but, as they were quick to point out, their analysis was based
on the knowledge of causes ('physicke') while their competitors relied
on the unlearned practice of 'empirical medicine'. By the seventeenth
century the medical establishment had deliberately destroyed the medie-
val emblem of medicine. Uroscopy was no longer a symbol of learned
medicine. The image of a man gazing at a flask in his hand was now a
symbol of quackery, imposture, and fraud, and medicine was left without
a professional icon. To fill the gap, the medical establishment of that
time rediscovered the ancient Greco-Roman symbol of medicine, the
Rod of Asclepius, which had been virtually absent in the previous Chris-
tian era, and claimed it as their new symbol (Figure 4g).
8
2.3 From quack medicine to alchemy
Among generations of seventeenth-century Flemish and Dutch genre
painters, who frequently derived from the schools of Rubens and Rem-
brandt, medical quackery became a favorite topic. Apart from brutal
tooth-pullers and stupid surgeons, urine inspection was their most im-
portant motif. Since their paintings sold well, Flemish and Dutch genre
painters produced an enormous flood of urine inspecting doctors
8
For a review, see Wilcox & Whitham 2003; on the related Caduceus symbol (two
snake twisted around a rod), which was occasionally used by pharmacists, see Fried-
lander 1992.
