PART 12
The urine is best when the sediment is white, smooth, and consistent
during the whole time, until the disease come to a crisis, for it
indicates freedom from danger, and an illness of short duration; but
if deficient, and if it be sometimes passed clear, and sometimes with
a white and smooth sediment, the disease will be more protracted,
and not so void of danger. But if the urine be reddish, and the sediment
consistent and smooth, the affection, in this case, will be more protracted
than the former,
[p. 50]but still not fatal. But farinaceous sediments in
the urine are bad, and still worse are the leafy; the white and thin
are very bad, but the furfuraceous are still worse than these. Clouds
carried about in the urine are good when white, but bad if black.
When the urine is yellow and thin, it indicates that the disease is
unconcocted; and if it (the disease) should be protracted, there maybe
danger lest the patient should not hold out until the urine be concocted.
But the most deadly of all kinds of urine are the fetid, watery, black,
and thick; in adult men and women the black is of all kinds of urine
the worst, but in children, the watery. In those who pass thin and
crude urine for a length of time, if they have otherwise symptoms
of convalescence, an abscess may be expected to form in the parts
below the diaphragm. And fatty substances floating on the surface
are to be dreaded, for they are indications of melting. And one should
consider respecting the kinds of urine, which have clouds, whether
they tend upwards or downwards, and upwards or downwards, and the
colors which they have and such as fall downwards, with the colors
as described, are to be reckoned good and commended; but such as are
carried upwards, with the colors as described, are to be held as bad,
and are to be distrusted. But you must not allow yourself to be deceived
if such urine be passed while the bladder is diseased; for then it
is a symptom of the state, not of the general system, but of a particular
viscus.
