William of Marseille explained

William of Marseille^[1] was a thirteenth-century English academic, teaching in France. He is known for the medical-astrological treatise De urina non visa.^[2] The method is to use a horoscope to deduce properties of the urine of a patient for diagnosis, when the urine itself cannot be obtained.^[3] This book was still used at the University of Bologna in 1405.^[4]

Works

From Liste lateinischer Autoren und anonymer Werke des 13. Jahrhunderts (ca. 1170-1320)

• Astrologia
• De urina non visa (1219)
• Tabula de stellis fixis
• Tractatus de meteoris (c. 1230)

References

• Book: Lynn Thorndike . Lynn Thorndike . A History of Magic and Experimental Science During the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era . 2 . New York . Columbia University Press . 0-231-08795-0 . 1923.
• Book: fr, la . Guillaume l'Anglais . Laurence Moulinier-Brogi . Guillaume l’Anglais, le frondeur de l’uroscopie médiévale (XIIIe siècle) . Geneva . Droz . 2011 . Hautes études médiévales et modernes . 2-600-01363-6--> .
• Laurence Moulinier-Brogi (2012). « William the Englishman’s De urina non visa and its fortune », London—Read at the conference "Medical Prognosis in the Middle Ages"

Notes and References

1. Also known as Guillelmus Massiliensis
2. On Unseen Urine. Dated to 1219.http://www.bo.astro.it/dip/Museum/english/sto1_06.html.
3. The medieval doctor would be expected to make a diagnosis from the patient's urine. There is an obvious problem if the patient's urine can not be obtained. William solves this tricky question by casting the patient's horoscope and working out what the urine should have looked like. http://www.nicholaswhyte.info/astrol.htm
4. http://www.bo.astro.it/dip/Museum/english/sto1_06.html