Uncovering Ancient Urine Flasks: A Strange Glimpse into Renaissance Rome.

A Renaissance-era trash dump discovered inside the Forum of Caesar in Rome is brimming with old medical supplies, including 500-year-old medicine bottles and urine flasks — containers used to collect patients' pee for medical analysis, a new study finds. More than half of the glass vessels recovered from the dump are likely what medieval Latin medical texts call matula — urine flasks. During the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the practice of uroscopy was a central diagnostic tool for physicians.