This is ABSOLUTELY TRUE. Medieval medicine got a lot wrong but the concept of being able to tell what was going on inside someone's body by checking what came out, specifically urine, was one thing medieval (and classical!) medical practitioners got right. It's called uroscopy, and you can tell when an illustration features bottles of pee because the shape of the bottles - with a round bottom - is distinctive. There's a whole subgenre of medical diagram that organizes pee by color to help doctors diagnose what could be ailing a patient. We have a few in manuscripts in Philadelphia!
Uroscopy chart on f. 23v of UPenn LJS 449
Urine wheel on f. 9v of Rosenbach Library MS 1004/29. This is a very cool manuscript, it's an Almanack (written in York, England, in 1364) meant to be attached to a person's belt so it could be easily carried and consulted. So instead of a usual book format, it's made of large sheets that are folded up and bound together.
And here's a couple of other (somewhat less charming than the dog doctor above) illustrations of doctors examining pee on f. 121v of UPenn LJS 24 (L), from a medical textbook for Dominicans written in Paris in the mid-13th century, and f. 69v of UPenn LJS 463 (R), a medical and astrological compendium written in Germany in 1443.
LJS 463 was featured on Coffee With A Codex back in December, and we featured LJS 24 back in January.
h/t @mary-bennett for the tags <3
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